Oottooo

DOĞU ERGIL
A REASSESSMENT: THE YOUNG TURKS, THEIR POLITICS AND

ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE
INTRODUCTION
The Jeunes Turcs or Young Turks were a heterogeneous body of in

tellectuals with conflicting interests and ideologies. However, their common
goal was opposition to Hamidian absolutism.
Although the Young Turks were the heirs of the New Ottoman political
tradition of constitutionalism and freedom —which were believed to be the
final words in modernization by both factions— they did not come from the
elite bureaucratic circles of the New Ottomans1.
The Young Turks were the products of the modern secular, military or
civilian professional schools. They
«belonged to the newly emerging professional classes: lecturers
in the recently founded government colleges, lawyers trained in
western law, journalists, minor clerks in the bureaucracy, and
junior officers trained in western-style war colleges. Most of them
were half-educated and products of the state (high) schools. The
well-educated ones had no experience of administration and little
idea about running a government. There was not a single ex
perienced statesman amongst them»1 2.
The historical evidence at hand suggests that the great majority of the
Young Turk cadres was recruited primarily from among the children of the
petty-bourgeoisie. Most of the prominent Young Turk statesmen came from
such marginal middle-class families. For example, Talat Paşa (Prime Minister)
was a small postal clerk in Salonica with only a junior high-school education
1. The best socio-historical account of the social origins, ideologies and biographies
of the Young Turks and their most important organization ittihat ve Terakki or Society
of Union and Progress members may be found in Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Makedonya’
dan Orta Asya’ya: Enver Paşa, 3 vols, Istanbul, Remzi Kitabevi, 1970-1973; Ahmet Be
devi Kuran, Inkilap Tarihimiz ve ittihat ve Terakki, İstanbul, 1948; İbrahim Temo,
ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyetinin Teşekkülü ve Hidemati Vataniye ve inkılabı MilliyeyeDair
Hatıralarım, Mecidiye, 1939; Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks, Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1969; Ernest E. Ramsaur, The Young Turks, Prelude to the Revolution of 1908, New
Jersey, Princeton Univ. Press, 1957.
2. Feroz Ahmad, ibid., pp. 16-17.
A Reassessmet: The Young Turks, their Politics and Anti-Colonial Struggle 27
before he joined the «Union and Progress». The father of Enver Paşa
(Commander in Chief and Minister of War at the age of 34) was a public
prosecutor of a small Rumeli (European Turkey) town; Cavit Bey (Minister
of Finance) was a teacher and a small bank official. The father of Mustafa
Kemal Paşa (First President of the Republic) was a small civil servant turned
lumber merchant before he died. Ziya Gökalp, theoretician of the Young
Turk movement, was a small-town student from Diyar-behir, an east Ana
tolian town1.
The Young Turk movement developed in two forms; as an amorphous
intellectual movement of opposition and constitutionalism on the one hand,
and a collection of highly organized societies on the other. The representatives
of the first faction operated primarily in European centers, especially Paris,
in order to escape the Hamidian secret police. The more militant and secret
organizations intent on overthrowing the Hamidian regime grew out of the
Mekteb-i Tibbiyeyi Askeriye or Military Medical School in Istanbul, and soon
spread to the Military Academy (Mekteb-i Harbiye), the Veterinary School
(Mekteb-i Baytariye), the School of Administration (Mekteb-i Mülkiye), the
Naval Academy (Mekteb-i Bahriye), and the Artillery and Engineering
School (Topçu ue Mühendishane Mekteb-i)*. It was in these modern profes
sional schools that the children of the Turkish petty-bourgeoisie sought a
better world than could be provided by the disintegrating Empire.
The Young Turk movement can be divided in two broad historical periods:
«liberal» or «conventional reformist» (1908-1913) and «bourgeois revolution
ary» (1913-1918). In the first period the Young Turks and their best organized
association, Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), had not yet come to
power. This was neither allowed by the established Ottoman bureaucracy
and the ulema (religious elite), nor dared by the Young Turks themselves.
Composed of junior officers, bureaucrats and professionals, CUP members
did not yet deem themselves powerful enough and apparently accepted the
popular view that they were not equipped with the skills and experience neces
sary to run an Empire.
Between 1908 and 1913, although the political arena was dominated by
the Young Turks, the cabinet was still largely recruited from among the
traditional Ottoman bureaucracy. Until 1913, when the CUP came to full
power, the Young Turks ruled indirectly through control of Parliament,
armed forces and occasional ministers whom they contributed to the Cabinet.1 2
1. Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın, Talat Paşa, Istanbul, 1943, p. 14 ff.;Ş . S. Aydemir, op. cit.,
voi. 1, 2; F. Ahmad, ibid., appendix.
2. Niyazi, Hatirat-i Niyazi, Istanbul, 1326 A.H., pp. 13-16, 21fT.; Kazim Nami Duru,
ittihat ve Terakki Hatıralarım, Istanbul, 1957, p. 6ff.; E. E. Ramsaur, op. cit., pp. 17-18.
28 Doğu Ergil
In the first or «reformist» period of the Young Turk regime, the CUP
was primarily interested in the adoption of legal reforms and Western insti
tutions in order to modernize the backward Ottoman society. In the economic
field they naïvely believed that through negotiations with the Western powers
they could bring an end to the capitulatory regime. They believed that ca
pitulations were obstacles to capitalist development and, following the free
trade doctrine of the period, both the Empire and the West would profit
from the development of the Empire. The optimism of the Young Turks
proved to be unfounded for reasons which will be discussed later.
The Great Balkan defeat was a turning point in Ottoman history as
well as the Young Turk movement. Taking advantage of the popular dis
illusionment with the performance of the commanders and administrators
of the old bureaucracy in the Balkan War, the CUP struck against the Ot
toman bureaucracy in the bloody Bab-i Ali1 Coup in 1913. Firmly settled in
power in 1913 the Young Turks began to introduce revolutionary changes
in the Ottoman social and economic structure. It was in this period that the
Unionists learned that national sovereignty and political power was mean
ingless without economic sovereignty and power. This realization led to a
struggle against Western imperialism and the domestic compradore capitalist
classes. The struggle started with administrative measures and economic
boycotts against foreign and minority products and services in the «refor
mist» period. It ended with armed confrontation, and finally World War I.
Now let us follow the development of Young Turk politics through these
stages.
THE «REFORMIST» PERIOD
The «Reformist» period of the Young Turk regime began in 1908 when
two young army officers Niyazi Bey and Enver Bey marched their troops
into the mountains and pledged their lives to hürriyet or freedom. Almost
overnight the European armies, the Rumeli armies, followed. The revolt
was quickly taken over by the «Committee of Union and Progress» (ittihat
ve Terakki Komitesi)—the most effective and popular of the Young Turks’
secret organizations12. Ultimatums were sent to the Sultan demanding the
restitution of the abrogated Constitution of 1876. These ultimatums also
1. Bab-i Ali, or «Sublime Porte» literally means «high» gate. It was the office of the
early Grand Vezirs. Later it came to mean the meeting place of the Ottoman Cabinet under
the supervision of the Grand Vezir.
2. Doğu Ergil and Robert I. Rhodes, «The Impact of the World Capitalist System on
Ottoman Society», Islamic Culture, XLVin, No. 2 (April, 1974), 91.
A Reassessment: The Young Turks, their Politics and Anti-Colonial Struggle 29
threatened that if the Sultan failed to obey their demands the Rumdi (Europe
an Turkey) armies and peoples would march on the capital and depose him1.
Finally Abdiil Hamid gave way and on July 23, 1908, announced that the
1876 Constitution would be activated once again. The despotism of the noto
rious Sultan was over.
This event was received with great joy throughout the Empire.
For some days Macedonia (the heart of rebellion) seemed to have
become Utopia. Enver Bey exclaimed that «arbitrary government»
had «disappeared». «Henceforth», cried this enthusiastic leader
of the revolution, «we are all brothers. There are no longer Bul-
gars, Greeks, Roumans, Jews, Mussulmans; under the same blue
sky we are all equal, we glory in being Ottomans». At Serres the
president of the Bulgarian Committee embraced the Greek Arch
bishop; at Drama the revolutionary officers imprisoned a Turk
for insulting a Christian; in an Armenian cemetery a procession
of Turks and Armenians listened to prayers, offered up by their
respective priests, for the victims of the Armenian massacres; at
Samsun the Turks saluted the beard of a Greek prelate; at Tripoli
Turks and Arabs joined in thanksgiving services. The Bulgarian
bands surrendered, and the brigand Sandanski was received like
the prodigal son»1 2.
It looked like freedom and brotherhood of all Ottoman peoples at long last
had been achieved.
Immediately after the elections which brought a clear majority of Young
Turks to the Parliament, two political and ideological tendencies divided the
Young Turks. The «liberal wing» favored decentralization and autonomy for
religious and national minorities of the Empire. The leader of this wing and
ideology was Sabaheddin Bey. On the other side, a more authoritarian group
organized within the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) favored central
authority and Turkish domination in government3.
In an atmosphere of unprecedented freedom and deliberations between
1. Sir E. Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople, London 1916, pp. 231-234; Ismail
Hakki Uzun Çarşili, «1908 Yilinda ikinci Meşrutiyetin ne Surette Ľan Edildiğine Dair
Vesikalar», Belleten 67 (1956), 103-174; Hikmet Bayur, Türk inkilabi Tarihi, 3 vols.,
Istanbul 1940, I, p. 435 ff.
2. William Miller, The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors, 1801-1927, Cambridge
1936, p. 476.
3. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London, Oxford Univ. Press,
1968, p. 213.
30 Doğu Ergil
diverse groups in the Parliament, at first liberal views and policies seemed
to prevail. The liberal-Westernist deputies were organized in a series of ephem
eral parties, the most important being Ahrar. They remained outside of CUP1,
but never became as powerful or as organized as the former.
The CUP not only had a wide following in the army, but soon extended
its organization to smaller administrative units throughout the country.
The Ahrar Party on the whole retained its links with the traditional Ottoman
bureaucracy (which staffed the Cabinet until CUP came to full power in 1913)
and the compradore commercial strata of Istanbul and Izmir.
Unfortunately the liberal and moderate phase of the second constitu
tional era (ikinci Meşrutiyet) was short-lived. Immediately after the procla
mation of constitutional rule in 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzego
vina, Greece annexed Crete, and Bulgaria declared her independence. These
events and defeats that followed were recognized by the Young Turks as
acts of aggression carried out by the European powers, and as acts of betrayal
by some of the peoples of the Ottoman Empire.
The first, they believed, ought to be protested and the second repressed.
This evaluation greatly strengthened the hand of the centralist and authorita
rian CUP.
On February 13, 1909, the Committee accomplished the replacement of

Grand Vezir Kamil Paşa with Hüseyin Hilmi Paşa. Both were survivors of
the ancien regime, but the latter was more sympathetic to the Young Turk
policies.
This change widened the breach between the Sultan, liberals, and con
servatives on the one hand and the CUP on the other. One month after the
fall of Kamil Paşa a reactionary mutiny incited by the so-called Muhammedan
Union —an extremist religious organization intent on restoring the powers of
Sultan Abdul Hamid— took place1 2. The mutiny, which is commonly referred
to as the «31st of March Incident» was quickly dominated by the soldiers
—mainly Albanian— of the First Army Corps stationed in Istanbul (April 12,
1909). The mutineers were joined by soldiers from other units, medrese stu
dents and other religious groups whose position in the social hierarchy was
increasingly undermined by Parliamentary politics and the new bureaucracy.
Their motto was «the restoration of Seriate (holy law). For them the disor
1. T. Z. Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasi Partiler, 1859-1952, Istanbul 1952, p. 186 ff.;

B. Lewis, ibid., p. 220.
2. E. Pears, op. cit., pp. 274-275; Francis McCullagh, The Fall of Abd-ul-Hamid,
London 1910, pp. 74-75.
dered state of the Empire was due «to deviation from the word and spirit
of the holy Koran»1.
The reaction soon spread across Anatolia and took the form of massacre.
Armenians in the South-east had been demanding independence and self-
rule. Acutely embarrassed and frustrated by these events, the CUP acted
swiftly. An «Action Army» (Hareket Ordusu) under Mahmut Şevket Paşa
reached Istanbul on April 23 from Salonika.
Hareket Ordusu suppressed the rebellion in a short time and executed
its leaders. «The liberals had supported the mutiny, and shared its defeat»1 2.
Abdul Hamid, the symbol behind the reaction was deposed and sent into
exile in Salonika. Hareket Ordusu declared martial law in the capital and it
remained in effect for two years.The Commander of the Army, Mahmud Şev
ket Paşa became the Inspector-General of the first three Army Corps.Through
Mahmud Şevket Paşa’s extraordinary powers the CUP was able to eliminate
Sultan Hamid’s men in the court and cabinet and installed CUP officials
in their place. Mehmet Reşat, the new Sultan, became a figurehead in the new
administration which was dominated by the CUP3.
On April 12, 1909 the CUP declared that it was no longer a secret organi
zation, but had become a political party. However, its Central Committee
(Merkez-i Umumi) remained as a secret party to the end. After the CUP
became a political party, it was organized as a General Assembly (Meclis-i
Umumi) consisting of twenty members and chaired by the President (Reis-i
Umumi); a Central Committee (Merkez-i Umumi) of ten members under the
General Secretary (Katib-i Umumi); and a General Secretariat (Kalem-i
Umumi) of about 5-6 members headed by theVice-PresidentfTekil-i Umumi).
«The function of the General Assembly was to co-ordinate the work of the
Central Committee, which dealt with all the Unionists’ organizations outside
Parliament, and the General Secretariat, which handled the Unionists in
Parliament»4. Within this organizational structure, the CUP divided power
between the Central Committee and the Cabinet. To preserve the unity of the
inner circle, and discipline in the organization, members of the supposedly
secret Central Committee did not hold public office5.
1. E. Pears, ibid., p. 257 ff.; W. M. Ramsay, The Revolution in Constantinople and

Turkey, London 1909, p. 11 ff.; Ali Fuat Türkgeldi, Görüp işittiklerim, Ankara 1951,
p. 25 ff.; Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, Montreal, McGill,
1964, pp. 340-343.
2. B. Lewis, op. cit., p. 217.
3. Halid Ziya Uşakligil, Saray ve Ötesi, 3 vols., Istanbul 1940, I, p. 12 ff.; B. Lewis,
ibid., p. 217.
4. F. Ahmad, op. cit., p. 142.
5. T. Z. Tunaya, op. cit., pp. 192, 214-225; F. Ahmad, ibid., p. 160.
32 Doğu Ergil
What kind of persons were the members of the Committee or Society of

Union and Progress? Prof. Niyazi Berkes answers this question as follows:
«The Society became the expression of the changing part of the

(new) Turkish social organization; it did not encompass the pea
santry ... it did not gain the allegiance of the conservative gen
erations and classes ... The mass basis of the Society was amor
phous and evolving; this was reflected in the shapelessness of
its ideology. Its class basis gradually shifted ... to the esnaf
(artisans) and the tüccar (merchants) of the towns — the class
out of which the Party of Union and Progress sought to forge
a Turkish bourgeoisie. Most of the leaders . .. were uprooted
Turks, or Turks who had broken with tradition through education,
or non-Turkish Muslims who had been Turkified by modern edu
cation. Army officers, doctors and teachers were prominent a-
mong them. By Hamidian standards, they were all dehris (in
novators in religious matters) in their politico-religious views;
they were firm believers in progress»1.
In essence the Young Turk movement as represented by the Union and

Progress Committee remained primarily urban. However in seeking a nation
al identity and representation it gradually penetrated the countryside through
the administrative machinery and through its alliance with the landowning
class.
Because the landed class was not only the strongest Muslim class of
the time, but it also controlled the countryside, this alliance seemed inevi
table. By «delegating» power to the local landlords, the CUP was assured of
noninterference in decisions on urban and foreign policy and was assured
that the peasantry would be recruited for the Balkan and World War that
followed. In theory, the landed class served as the link between the CUP and
the peasantry. In actuality, this strategy guaranteed the landed class had the
power to veto any decisions at the national level that might threaten their
interests. These interests were closely protected by a group of powerful CUP
deputies who came from prominent landed families. For example, these depu
ties included Halil Menteşe (Speaker of the Parliament), Ali Cenani (later
Minister of Commerce in the Ankara Government) and Mustafa Rahmi
Evrenos1 2.
1. N. Berkes, loc. cit., p. 329.

2. Feroz Ahmad, op. cit., Ş. S. Aydemir, Enver Paşa, op. cit., have extensive in
formation about the CUP’s members and leaders, and their social backgrounds.
In inevitable consequence of this implicit understanding was the continued

isolation of the peasantry and the ever-present possibility that the peasants
could be mobilized against the national elite. As we shall see, this expedient
«alliance» was continued after the national liberation struggle and eventually
led to the failure of Turkish development.
However, a distinction must be made between the political attitudes of
the semi-feudal pre-capitalist landlords of central and eastern Anatolia and
the capitalist landlords of western and southern regions who mainly produced
for foreign markets. No overt conflict arose between the first group and the
CUP. First, because their role as rural administrators in the interior was not
challenged by the CUP’s centralist administration. This was because commu
nication and transportation facilities were so poor in Turkey at that time that
the interference of CUP officials with the affairs of country notables was
virtually impossible. Second, the pre-capitalist landlords were not in any way
affected by the CUP’s ambitious program for the elimination of the foreign
and minority capitalists who controlled foreign trade. For the great majority
of the Turkish landlords owned large estates on which peasants worked for
subsistence rather than commodity production. These landlords did not make
their wealth so much by the sale of the annual produce in the domestic market
as by the rent (in kind) they exacted from the peasants working on their lands
and their service as usurers. Thus the pre-capitalistic landlords were not de
pendent on,, or in alliance with, either the foreign or the minority bourgeoisie
to market their produce abroad.
On the other hand, the capitalist farmers of the west and the south oppos
ed the CUP and its radical politics. The little systematic information that we
have shows that the capitalist farmers lent their support to the liberal Ahrar
Party and its successor the Liberal Union (Hürriyet ve itilaf) after 19111.
We believe that there are two reasons for this political preference. First,
the CUP significantly affected, in fact ruptured, established commercial rela
tions and the balance of power in the rich, economically developed, sections of
the country. The CUP was intent on eliminating the foreign and minority
compradore bourgeoisie from the national economy. But the Turkish capital
ist farmers were dependent on these compradore elements for the marketing
of their products and the importation of luxury items which the CUP wanted
to restrict.
The Young Turks’ program to develop the national economy not only
1. Evidence on this issue has been gathered from the results of the by-election of
December 11, 1911, and of the general election held in January 1912, although the lat
ter’s results were greatly altered by the CUP. Also see T. Z. Tunaya, op. cit., pp. 186 ff.
and 322.
3
34 Doğu Ergil
disrupted the close relationship between the Turkish landed and foreign
minority commercial bourgeoisie, but also challenged their power through
statist measures in the urban centers and more developed rural areas which
were more easily accessible by the existing railroads and sea transportation.
We will see later that the landed bourgeoisie of the Turkish west and south
opposed the nascent national liberation movement in 1919 and sought a
peaceful existence with the minority capitalist classes under foreign occupa
tion.
But the most ardent supporters of the CUP came from the nascent Turk
ish middle-class composed of junior officers, lower bureaucrats and profes
sionals (lawyers, teachers, doctors and journalists) —all products of modern
schools— on the one hand, and the petty-bourgeoisie (retail traders, artisans,
and craftsmen) of the Anatolian towns who were pushed into insignificance
by the minority mercantile classes. The latter had exclusive control over
wholesale commerce, import-export and transportation1.
YOUNG TURK POLITICS IN THE «REFORMIST» PERIOD: 1908-1913
At first the Young Turks had no intention of altering the basic state struc
ture. They merely wanted the implementation of Constitutional rule which
would guarantee the administration of the country by competent cabinets
rather than according to the whim of an absolute monarch. Arbitrary rule,
they naively believed, was the main reason for Ottoman underdevelopment
and disintegration1 2. If, they believed, a regime of justice and equality before
law and political representation in a parliament could be established, the
diverse nationalities of the Empire would not pursue separationist ends.
Constitutional Monarchy would produce a basis of a quasi-federative system,
in which, although it was not explicitly admitted, the Turkish element would
predominate because of its numerical weight (12.5/24 million in 1911)3.
Indeed, representation was given to all peoples of the Empire. Out of
288 deputies elected in 1908 for the Ottoman Parliament, there were 147 Turks,
60 Arabs, 27 Albanians, 26 Greeks, 14 Armenians, 10 Slavs, and 4 Jews4.
1. Doğu Ergil and Robert I. Rhodes, «Western Capitalism and the Disintegration of
the Ottoman Empire» Economy and History 18 (January, 1975 forthcoming); N. Berkes,
loc. cit., pp. 271-276.
2. E. E. Ramsaur, op. cit., p. 44; N. Berkes, ibid., p. 309 ff.; Prince Sabahaddin,
Türkiye Našil Kurtarilabilir, Istanbul, Elif Yayınlan, 1965, passim.
3. These figures are taken from the New International Yearbook 1908, New York
1909, p. 703. Figures are rounded.
4. T. Z. Tunaya, op. cit., p. 165.
But as we shall see Ottomanism, the quasi-federation of the Ottoman nationa

lities, proved to be powerless in the face of secessionist nationalist movements
among the non-Muslim Ottoman peoples who soon realized that Ottomanism
meant Turkish dominance. Moreover, Russian provocation (among the Slavs)
and French and English provocation (among Greeks, Armenians and Arabs)
contributed to the disintegration of the Ottoman domain.
The Young Turks’ response to these nationalist and separatist move
ments can be summed up in Talat Bey’s (later Paşa and Grand Vezir) words
uttered in 1910 at a Party convention in Salonika:
«We have made unsuccessful attempts to convert the non-Muslim

into a loyal Ottoman, and all such efforts must inevitably fail, as
long as the small independent States in the Balkan Peninsula re
main in a position to propagate ideas of separatism among the
inhabitants of Macedonia. There can therefore be no question of
equality, until we have succeeded in our task of Ottomanizing the
Empire — a long and laborious task, in which I venture to pre
dict that we shall succeed after we have at last put an end to the
agitation and propaganda of the Balkan States»1.
In line with these sentiments two laws, the «Law of Associations», and
«Law for the Prevention of Brigandage and Sedition» were passed in late
190912. The «Law of Associations» prohibited the formation of political as
sociations based on or bearing the name of national or ethnic communities.
Following the proclamation of the Law, all national and ethnic organizations
and political associations were banned. The «Law for the Prevention of
Brigandage and Sedition» facilitated the repression of Balkan nationalist
movements3 which had already embarked on guerilla warfare4.
After guaranteeing their firm control over the State through martial
law and other repressive legislative measures, the Young Turks started to
reform the state machinery. A new provincial and local administration was
created which extended the control of the central government to towns and
smaller administrative units. A new national police force was established
1. Quoted in B. Lewis, op. cit., p. 218.

2. H. Bayur, op. cit., I, p. 306.
3. It is through these struggles which the Turkish Government sought to suppress that
most of theUnionist officers learned both guerilla tactics and the pride of national struggle.
This experience proved to be very valuable in the Turks’ own national struggle following
the World War.
4. Ibid. p. 306 ff.; B. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 217-218.
36 Doğu Ergïl
in their Ministry of the Interior1.

The 1909 reaction provided a convenient excuse to dismiss many of the
old reactionary bureaucrats who manned the government offices. They were
replaced by younger men who had been educated in modern secular schools.
By the end of 1910 most of the Government bureaucracy had been restruc
tured1 2. 3
One of the most important accomplishments of the Young Turks was
their creation of a new system of secular primary and secondary schools.
These were followed by teachers’ training colleges. Education was secularized
and for the first time teachers became an important social group distinguish
able from army officers, civil servants, clericals and liberal professions®.
With the rise of secular schools and secular teachers, the importance and
strength of the medreses and ulema declined.
These developments in education extended educational opportunities
to girls who were previously virtually excluded from these advantages. After
the reorganization of Istanbul University (the only University in the country)
girls were admitted but were required to sit behind curtains4. 5Women’s
education prepared the way for their entry into the professions and into pub
lic life®.
In the first years these reforms were carried out in a rather haphazard
manner because the Young Turks had neither a coherent ideology nor a pro
gram. Nevertheless they did formulate some concrete policies in their quest
to save the Devlet (State) which was also their ekmek kapisi6 or means of
livelihood.
Their movement turned into an elite revolution when they realized that
only by utilizing the power of the State could a radical program be implement
ed to develop a national economy and create a national bourgeois class with
which they would merge.
The first step in the creation of this class was a series of legislative acts
that removed the remaining legal and cultural obstacles in Ottoman laws and
customs to the spread of capitalist relations. The Land Laws of March
1911 and February 1913, the Law of Inheritance (adopted from German
Civil Code), and legislation legalizing the employment of women in busines-
1. Osman Nuri, Mecelle-i Umur-i Belediye, Istanbul 1922, vol. I, p. 960 ff.
2. Levant Herald, August 10, 1908; F. Ahmad, op, cit., pp. 23-24.
4. Ibid., pp. 401-410.
5. Halide Edip Adivar, Turkey Faces West, New Haven 1930, pp. 130-131; B. Lewis,
op. cit., pp. 229-230.
6. Literally, «door of bread)).
ses and industry (especially during the war) were among these measures.
Similarly a uniform legal code was written to eliminate the differences
and special privileges —especially economic— between Muslim and non-
Muslim citizens of the Empire. It was hoped these laws would mark the end
of the millet system1 as all ethnic groups would be equal partners before
the law and make «Ottomanism» a reality.
But, because each millet and the privileged groups within them had vest
ed interests in the continuation of the status quo, the reformist programs
of the Young Turks alienated both Muslims and non-Muslims1 2. The non-
Muslims had come to enjoy all the extra-territorial privileges of European
citizens, through which they established their economic domination over the
Muslims. And, neither the Muslim clergy ( ulema) nor the Muslim lower
classes wanted to relinquish the privilege of belonging to the ruling ethno
religious group. This was particularly important for the most indigent group
in the Empire: the Turkish-Muslim peasant. In the absence of a nationalist
movement, even among the Young Turks until after 1910, the only link that
tied the Turkish peasantry to the ruling group was their common religion3.
The impoverished Turkish peasant also saw religion as a symbol that separat
ed him from the more affluent non-Muslim ethnic groups. In this sense,
religious conservatism among the Turkish agrarian masses and the local
petty-bourgeoisie became a substitute for nationalism.
Despite religious opposition from Muslim and non-Muslim alike, the
Young Turks carried out their legal reform. They were determined to end
the special privileges of the foreign and compradore minority which were
guaranteed by the capitulations4.
They tried to accomplish this through two forms of activities: (1) adopt
ing or enacting civil and commercial laws and regulations, and, (2) negotiations
with Western powers to abrogate the stifling capitulations. Despite some
1. Millet system was an aspect of the Ottoman socio-political system. «Ottoman sub
jects were organized vertically into social estates according to occupations, and horizontally
into millets according to their religious affiliations» (Karpat, op. cit., p. 113). Each millet
had the right to manage its own affairs in religion, family and individual matters like
marriage, inheritance, divorce, intra-communal disputes, etc. In this system there was no
nationality, but only religious communities. Turks were a part of the Muslim millet.
2. R. E. Ward and D. A. Rustow (eds.). Political Modernization in Japan arid Tur
key, New Jersey, Princeton, 1964, pp. 3-4.
3. Even today when you ask a Turkish peasant who he is, it is not unlikely that the
answer will be «Thank God I am a Muslim».
4. Doğan Avcioğlu, Milli Kurtuluş Tarihi, 3 vols., Istanbul 1974, Ш, pp. 921-928,
1056-1058.
38 Doğu Ergil
successful overtures in the first area, none of the goals were completely
realized before 1913 due to internal and external opposition.
After a series of legal reforms the Young Turks invited the Western
powers, who had claimed that the raison d’etre for the capitulations was the
heterogeneity of the Ottoman legal system, to enter into negotiations for the
abolition of the capitulations in 1913. Neither this request, nor the request
that customs duties be raised by 4 percent, and that certain taxes be applied
to foreigners was honoured by the Western powers1.
Even a loan request from European economic sources in 1910 to finance
the much needed reform projects was denied, even on the old exploitative
terms (pledge of the custom receipts of Istanbul was offered)1 2.
After these bitter lessons, the Young Turks’ admiration of the West
ern benevolence and «civilization» underwent a drastic change. These changes
and the nature of the struggle waged against Western imperialism and minority
compradore capitalism will be discussed in the «revolutionary» period.
The Young Turks’ most powerful, and, after the repression of the liber
al wing, its unrivaled organization, «Union and Progress», played a crucial
role in the last decade of the Ottoman Empire. The «Union and Progress»
was the first political organization in the Empire that was based on more than
a tiny political clique. It established the basis of «bourgeois populist» politics.
In their protests against Western annexations of Ottoman territories or
internal problems created by minority insurrections,
«the Unionists used the urban crowd with consummate skill in
their political maneuvres. They held mass meetings and brought
about the crowd on their behalf whenever necessary»3.
However, the phase of «liberal reformism» and constitutionalism would
not live long. The continued disintegration of the Empire increased foreign
borrowing necessary to carry out desired reforms, and finally the humili
ating defeat suffered in the Balkan War4 (1912-1913) ended the first phase
of Unionist rule — the «reformist» period of 1908-1913.

2. Mahmoud Moukhtar Pacha, La Turquie, ľ Allemagne et ľ Europe depuis le Traité
de Berlin, Paris 1924, p. 106; H. Bayur, op. cit., I., p. 323. It was after this generosity of
the Germans that the Turco-German friendship quickly developed into an alliance. In
this sense the mistake of her rivals served as an excellent opportunity by Germany to
expand her influence towards the East.
4. Balkan War was the last Turkish war before the World War, to follow one year later.
In a series of wars between 1911 and 1913, the Ottoman government lost 424,000 square
miles of land out of a total of about 1,153,000 square miles, including the birthplaces of
YOUNG TURK IDEOLOGY IN THE LIBERAL REFORMIST PERIOD
A brief study of the ideology and activities of the Young Turks during
the «reformist» period reveals the shallowness and limitations of this last
and most significant Ottoman political movement — the so-called Young
Turk Revolution.
There seem to be three distinguishable ideologies of the period: West
ernism, Ottomanism and Islamism. Let us briefly analyze these ideological
trends.
Westernism. From the beginning of the 19th century, Westernism became
the constant concern and ambition of all Turkish reforms and reformers.
The form or cost of adopting Western institutions and technology was not
even seriously considered. The publications of the late 19th century and early
20th century were filled with praises of Western institutions and way of life.
Constitutionalism, parliamentarism, and private entreprise were the magic
words of the time. It was believed that when these products of the Western
Civilization were in the native «soil», Western capitalism would increasingly
flourish in this dependent society.
Neither the New Ottomans nor the Young Turks understood the materi
al roots and the historical evolution of either their own or Western cultured
society1. Until the very end of the Empire the Ottoman intellectuals advocated
the adoption of Western cultural patterns and technology in order to make
their country as advanced and as prosperous as a European nation. But
they failed to see the structural limits that would prevent their dependent
economy from successfully copying the West.
They believed that their sincere reformism would be hailed in the West
and the Western powers would stop interfering in the internal affairs of the
Empire on behalf of non-Muslim nationalities. They even believed that once
constitutional monarchy was established the Europeans would look upon the
Ottoman Empire as an equal State and revoke the capitulations through
negotiations2.
It was with these feelings that people rejoicing in the streets of Istanbul
a day after the declaration of Constitutional rule in 1908, cut loose the
many CUP members, and approximately 5 million souls from a population of about 26
million (Feroz Ahmad, ibid,, p. 152).
1. N. Berkes, loc. cit., pp. 348-366; Ismail Cern, op. cit., pp. 355-360.
2. Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın in Tanin September 9, 1909 expresses this view. Also, Lowter
(Gerald Augustus, British Ambassador at Istanbul, 1908-1913) to Grey (Edward, British
Foreign Secretary, 1900-1916), no. 434, June 27, 1910, British Foreign Office (BFO) 371/
993/23945 at the Public Record Office (PRO) London.
40 Doğu Ergil
horses from the carriage of the British Ambassador, Sir G. Lowther, and
drew it themselves to show their appreciation of his wonderful country1.
But the British Government did not act like an exemplary nation. In
a reaction to recent events, Sir Edward Grey, the British Miniter of Foreign
Affairs, wrote to his Ambassador in Istanbul complaining that if the Ottoman
constitutionalism really did work and the Turks did build a strong adminis
tration it would have unfortunate consequences in Egypt and even India1 2.
Westernization in the context of Western imperialism could only take
the form of an urban-cultural transformation that rendered the urban popul
ations more dependent on Western products to perpetuate their new Western
life styles. Moreover, the gap between an urban population, economically
and culturally dependent on Europe, and the much larger agrarian masses
living in a basically subsistence economy greatly increased the cultural and
economic distance between city and countryside. The gap between city and
countryside already existed before Westernization. Now it took on a new
character.
The Young Turks soon realized that legal reforms would not save the
Empire from further disintegration, and the «civilized» West had no intention
of relinquishing its colonial privileges in the Ottoman domain.
Moreover, Western annexations of Ottoman lands and Western support
of separationist movements among non-Turkish Ottoman peoples changed
the Unionists’ naive faith in the Western states, if not Western institutions.
Each secession of a non-Turkish national group from the Ottoman Empire
rendered an additional blow to the abstract concept of multi-ethnic «Otto-
manism».
Ottom anisin. The word Ottoman or Otman is a Western derivative of
Osman, a vassal prince (Bey) of the Selçuk-Turkish state, and the founder
of the Osmanli or Ottoman dynasty which came to rule a huge multinational
state.
The Ottoman State ceased to be a national polity soon after it began
to incorporate large areas in which non-Turkish populations lived. Al
though the dynasty remained Turkish, the State was composed of a variety
of ethnic and religious groups.
Ottoman administrative structure was not based on nationality. The
foundation of the millet system which assigned every social group a definite
1. British Documents on the Origin of the War, No. 263, PRO, London.
2. Grey to Lowter, quoted in Tevfik Çavdar, « CumhuriyetJDönemi Başlarken Türkiye
Ekonomisinin Görünümü ve Yapısal Kökenleri» in Türkiye Ekonomisinin 50 Yili Semi
neri, Istanbul, Sennet Matbaası, 1973, p. 113.
status and a set of privileges and obligations was religion1.

The Young Turks administration inherited the disintegrating Empire
during the final demise of this cosmopolitan system. They made the preserva
tion of the Empire a holy crusade, and for this reason, they clung to the con
cept of «Ottomanism».
The Young Turks hoped that the establishment of constitutional rule
would attract all nationalities into a genuinely representative Parliamentary
system and thus preserve the State2. They did not tolerate secessionist-
nationalist movements.
Turkish nationalism was not an issue in the conventional reformist
phase of the Young Turk regime. What was new in the cosmopolitan concept
of Ottomanism was its Western appearance. The Young Turks envisaged a
quasi-federative Parliament, a Constitution and political parties.
Islamism. The Young Turks were a product of a social environment in
which religious affiliation (a legacy of the millet system) still had prominence
over national identity. One of the most important characteristics that dis
tinguished the Ottoman Turks from the rest of the Ottoman peoples was their
Muslimness. The second was their language: Turkish. However, even Turk
ish was not the common language of all Turkish social classes. The language
of the ulema was Arabic and the medrese education was also in Arabic.
Moreover, the ruling Ottoman bureaucracy had traditionally used a hybrid
language called Osmanlica or Ottoman4. Osmanlica was a mixture of Arabic,
Persian and Turkish. In this sense, the communication barrier between an
educated urban Turk and a rural Turk was even greater than that which separ
ated a Turk and non-Turk living in the Anatolian countryside. This situation
remained unchanged until, under the influence of nationalist currents, Ot
toman minorities re-learned their ancestral languages in the second half
of the 19th century.
1 The Ottoman rulers considered Turks to be merely illiterate peasants that consti
tuted the source of manpower for their wars3. Turkish, Arab, and Albanian ethnic
groups made up the Islamic ümmet (spiritual brotherhood of international Islamic com
munity). What united these millets and ümmets was their Osmanlilik or Ottomanism.
As long as this system operated, nationalism and national consciousness did not emerge
among these ethnic groups.
2. H. Bayur, op. cit., p. 245 ff.; Lowter to Grey, no. 296, October, 1908, BFO 371/
555/34666; B. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 218-219.
3. Arnold J. Toynbee and Kenneth P. Kirkwood, Turkey, New York 1927, p. 35;
Kemal Karpat, «An Inquiry into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman
State; From Social Estates to Classes, From Millets to Nations», Research Monograph
No. 39, Princeton University, 1973, pp. 19-27.
42 Doğu Ergil
So the link that tied the rural masses of Turkish origin to the ruling
elite was Islam not nationality. Conversion to Islam for any non-Muslim
individual had traditionally been enough for that person to rise to the high
est ranks of the imperial bureaucracy.
As the religion of the ruling elite and the basis of temporal law ( Şeriat :
Kuranic law), Islam had always been one of the principal strands in the ideo
logical and cultural foundations of the Ottoman Empire, and the Turks were
deeply attached to their religion.
But the idea of pan-Islamism became important as a component of the
Young Turk ideology of Ottomanism, Islamism and Westernism only after
the loss of European provinces with their Christian population. Now the
Turks had become numerically the most important ethnic group within the
Ottoman Empire. Arabs made up the second largest group. The natural link
between the two ethnic groups was Islam. But Ottomanism and Pan-Islam
ism were anachronistic ideologies in a period when nationalist movements
were threatening the very foundations of the Ottoman Empire.
The Limits of Islamism, Both the conservatism of the Hamidian era
and the bloody 31st ofMarch reaction (1909, 31 Mart Vakasi) againstWest-
ernism and modern ideas led the progressive Young Turks to question the
Islamic foundation of their polity. The reaction once again had revealed the
wide gap between the people, ignorant and poverty-ridden as they were, and
the Westernist modern bureaucrats or officers, some of whom had been
killed during the reaction simply because they were graduates of a modern
school (mektepli)1. In the mind of the people who were led by the ulema,
the religious literate and the students of the medreses (scholastic or religious
schools which raised the Muslim clergy and specialists of kuranic law —
Şeriat), all the evils which they confronted were due to the infidel influence
of the West. The most conspicuous Western institutions were the modern
secular schools that undermined the ulema's place in the traditional political
structure. With the influence of the ulema and medrese students (softas),
the mektepli (graduate of modern schools) became a target of public hostility
and even aggression among the lower Muslim Ottoman classes.
These events led the Young Turks to undertake the dangerous task of
secularization and to attempt the separation of Church and State. They knew
1. Before the sweeping changes made in the military after 1913, there were two kinds
of officers in the Ottoman army: (1) men who had started as enlisted men with no or very
little education (often illiterate) and risen in the military hierarchy throughout the years,
and, (2) graduates of modern military schools and the War academy. The first were called
Alayli, and the second. Mektepli. Naturally the first were conservative and much more
congenial to the popular conservative elements outside the army.
that only by these reforms could the rival power of the ulema be reduced or
abolished. But although they controlled the army, the Young Turks did not
attempt to launch their decisive secularization campaign until after they came
to full power in 1913.
Nevertheless, the biggest blow to the pan-Islamic ideology of the Young
Turks came with the Albanian and Arab separationist movements in 1912.
Arab nationalism was especially instrumental in shattering ümmet—the con
cept of an international Islamic polity.Although Islamism declined as a popul
ar ideology among the educated strata, the Young Turks still remained char
acteristically Islamic in many respects.
With the waning of Ottomanist and pan-Islamist ideologies because
they had no more practical value, there remained two basic ideologies still
attractive to the young Turkish intelligentsia: Westernism and Turkism.
We will try to analyze the evolution of these ideologies and their impact on
the fate of the Empire in the next section.
THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD: 1913-1918
The second phase of the history and politics of the CUP starts with
the April 1912 elections. Frustrated by unsatisfactory compromises with
the palace bureaucracy and other political opponents who had gathered under
the banner of the «Liberal Alliance», the CUP diligently prepared for the
1912 general elections. It was determined to form its own Government.
In this carefully manipulated, famousSopaliSeçim or «big stick election»,
the opposition groups were able to elect only six of 275 members to the Par
liament1. But due to the resistance of the Palace, the «Liberal Alliance»
whose opposition had now shifted outside the Parliament, and some army of
ficers who opposed the army’s role in politics, the new Cabinet which was
formed by the new Grand Vezir, Kamil Paşa, a well-known Anglophile, to
a great extent resembled the former ones in its composition1 2. 3But the life
of this cabinet was shortlived. The Balkan War that started in the same year
(1912) ended with a humiliating defeat and a terrible loss of human life in
1913s.
All European provinces except a small portion of Eastern Thrace were
1.T. Z. Tunaya, op. cit., p. 222; B. Lewis, op. cit., p. 37.

2.H. Bayur, Sadrazam Kamil Paşa, Siyasi Hayati, Ankara 1954, pp. 307-312;
Lewis,ibid., pp. 222-223.
3.Ahmet Bedevi Kuran, Osmanli imparatorluğunda inkılap Hareketleri ve Milli
Mücadele, İstanbul 1959, pp. 573-585; Reginald Rankin, The Inner History of the Balkan
War, London 1914.
44 Doğu Ergil
lost to the small Balkan states. Soon hundreds of thousands of bewildered

Turkish immigrants from lost provinces1 began to pour into Istanbul from
these lost areas.
The war was administered by the old Ottoman Paşas with incredible
inefficiency1
2. Choosing the optimum time when the public resentment of
the government was at its height, the young Unionist officers headed by
Enver Bey (later Paşa) planned and executed the famous Bab-iAli coup on
January 23, 1913. The Union and Progress was now firmly seated in power.
Before going into the discussion of the revolutionary changes accom
plished by the Young Turks let us see how the recent internal and external
problems affected the ideological composition of the Young Turks in the era
starting in 1913.
FROM OTTOMANISM AND PAN-ISLAMISM TOWARD TURKISH NATIONALISM
As has been discussed earlier, Ottomanism and Pan-Islamism were

the predominant aspects of the Young Turk ideology in the earlier years.
Behind the concept of Ottomanism lay the ideology of a multi-national (or
ethnic) federation undivided by national and religious differences. For such
a system to function relatively smoothly one of two conditions must exist:
either (1) the dominant ethnic (or religious) group or the central authority,
often controlled by the former, must be relatively strong, or (2) the
national consciousness of constituent ethnic or religious groups must be
relatively low. Generally these two phenomena are interdependent.
By the middle of the 19th century the second condition no longer existed.
On the one hand, non-Muslim minority groups had gained greater economic
prominence and affluence than the Muslim-Turkish population through the
capitulatory system. But, on the other hand, they were still treated as cultural
and political inferiors.
Economic differentiation, political repression, and the continual inter
vention of Russia in favor of Slavs, and of England and France in favor of
Greeks, Armenians and other nationalities created a fertile environment
within which secessionist movements tore the Ottoman Empire apart.
After Albanian independence in 1912 the Arabs demanded autonomy.
Neither the religious leadership of the Ottoman ruler nor their own Muslim-
1. Ibid.; Ş. S. Aydemir, op. cit., II, passim. Doğan Avcioğlu, loc. cit., UI, pp. 1104-
1124; A. J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, New York 1970, p.
138 ff.
2. Ş. S. Aydemir, ibid., pp. 248-288; Selanikli Bahri, Balkan Harbinde Garp Or
dusu, İstanbul 1913.
ness was enough to induce the Muslim minorities of the Ottoman Empire to
live as subject peoples under the guise of Pan-Islamism1. Also, the Ottoman
central authority was not strong enough to curb the rise of nationalism among
the subject peoples of the State.
Moreover, many nationalities of the Ottoman Empire were promised
independence by the European powers whose interests in the Mediterranean
area were blocked by the Ottoman Empire. Control over small Balkan states
would give Russia the much needed «open door» to the warm seas; control of
Egypt would provide the British with the security of her supremacy over
1. Arab opposition to the CUP became manifest with the increasing bias of the new
regime to establish a centralist administration under Turkish dominance. Arab deputies
in the new Ottoman Parliament were the first of the Ottoman Muslim millets to raise their
voices for autonomy within the imperial system under the spiritual leadership of the Caliph.
(For a similar evaluation consult: Great Britain, Foreign Office, Handbooks Prepared
under the Direction of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office : The Pan-Islamic Move
ment, No. 96 C & D, p. 21 ff.).
Despite the initial honeymoon between the Young Turks and the leaders of the Arab
world on the issues of equality of both races and the urgency of social reforms in the Arab
lands, this intimacy did not last long for three reasons:
1) The Young Turks refused decentralization and self-determination for non-Turkish
nationalities of the Empire.
2) Unlike the Arabs who emphasized the glories of Islam and the virtues of their religion,
the Young Turks made conscious efforts toward national regeneration on «pure Turkish»
lines. They sought to return to their pre-Islamic institutions (which would provide a basis
for cooperation with other Turkish-speaking peoples outside the Empire), and emphasized
the use of Turkish over other languages (especially Arabic) throughout the Empire. These
policies alienated the Arabs. «One can rightly say that the seeds of an Arab separatist
movement began to sprout from the soil of Turkish nationalism from 1909 onwards»,
(Zeine N. Zeine, The Emergence of Arab Nationalism, New York, Caravan Books, 1973,
p. 79).
3) Agitation of Western powers among the Arabs to win them to their camp should
Turkey side with Germany in the approaching grand clash in the Middle East. (Harold W.
V. Temperley, The History of the Peace Conference of Paris, London 1924, 6, p. 178;
David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, London 1933-1936, 4, p. 1802 ff.
As the Arab demands for decentralization (or better a confederacy type of Govern
ment) and serious social and economic reforms were unheeded by the Young Turk Govern
ment, a number of societies and political parties were formed by Arab intellectuals and
nationalists to defend the Arab cause. The most important of these associations were al-
Jamiyyah al-Arabiyyah al Fatat (The Young Arab Society, founded in 1909 in Paris) and
Hizb al-Lamarkaziyyah al-Idariyyah al-Uthmani (The Ottoman Administrative Decentral
ization Party founded in 1912 in Cairo). (See George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The
Story of the Arab National Movement, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1938, pp. 107-121).
When the activities of these nationalist/secessionist associations were supplemented
by the British strategy to «attack the Turkish Empire through its subjects» (Temperley,
op. cit., 6, p. 178) the ground for the Arab revolt was prepared.
46 Doğu Ergil
the water-way to India; and small states like Greece, Armenia, Syria would
not only facilitate military domination by Britain and France in the whole
Mediterranean basin, but also open doors to wider markets in the Eastern
European, North African and Asian regions.
When the imperialist schemes of the major Western powers and nation
alist insurrections converged on the Ottoman Empire —the «Sick Man of
Europe»— Ottoman internationalism and Pan-Islamism increasingly became
Turkish nationalism.
TURKISM: AN IDEOLOGICAL CONFUSION
Following the loss of the European provinces, Libya (to Italy) and Egypt
(which became autonomous and fell victim to British imperialism), the Turks
finally became conscious of their own existence as the most important group
in the Empire1. The second phase of Young Turk politics (1913-1918) reflects
these changes as the surge of Turkish nationalism rapidly replaced the idea
of «Ottomanism». The triple ideological formula of the Young Turk regime
now became Westernism, Islamism and Turkism.
Turkism first took the form of Pan-Turkism or Turanism (a reference
to the imaginary homeland of pre-Islamic Turks in central Asia). «Pan-Turan-
ism was sufficiently vague to be easily reconciled with Pan-Islam . . .»1
2 partly
because Turkish peoples in Asia were predominantly Muslims, and partly
because the Young Turks still wanted to keep the Arabic lands within the
national state3.
Moreover, Turanism, like Pan-Islam, was an expansionist ideology which
sustained national pride in the face of the humiliating Ottoman defeats re
ceived on the Western front. The Young Turks’ grandiose scheme of national
liberation from Western colonialism encompassed the liberation, within the
same policy, of other Turkish people from the Russian yoke and other Mus
lims, namely, Arabs from the thongs of European imperialism and uniting
them in one Turkish-Muslim empire4. It was only after the final disintegration
of the Ottoman Empire that Turkish nationhood and Anatolian (Asia minor)

3. Niyazi Berkes, cdntroduction» in Ziya Gökalp, Turkish Nationalism and Western
Civilization, ed. and tr. by idem. New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1959, p. 20; F.
Ahmad, op. cit., pp. 154-155.
4. N. Berkes, The Development..., p. 317; Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, XIX. Asir Türk
Edebiyatı Tarihi, Istanbul 1956, 1, p. 204 ff.; B. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 346-347.
Turkish nationalism became a possibility. Let us examine the transformation

of Turkism through the years.
Turkism was instilled in the Young Turk generation from three sources:
1. Most of the young army officers of the Young Turk Era (1900-1918)
started their military training fighting with Balkan nationalist guerillas of
Albanian, Montenegrin, Bulgarian and Greek origin. These young and ideal
istic officers came to respect the noble cause of their enemy. It was the secret
revolutionary organizations of these officers which toppled the Absolutist
monarchy and launched the Turkish nationalist struggle.
2. Scientific studies of Turcologists in Germany, Russia, Finland, Hun
gary and Denmark had contributed valuable works on the origins, empires
and cultures of pre-Islamic Turks going back to their origin in Central Asia.
Influenced by these works, two native Turcologists, Mustafa Celaledttin Paşa
(a Polish convert, formerly Constantin Berjinsky) and Ahmet Vefik Paşa
(grandson of a Greek convert), published influential works: Les Turcs An
ciens et Modernes (1869) and Lehçe i Osmani, respectively. Other writers
like Necip Asim, Ali Suavi and Süleyman Paşa also wrote on the unspoken
origins and the role of the Turk in the Ottoman Empire1.
These scientific and literary works opened the eyes of the Turks to their
unknown pre-Islamic origins and glories. In fact, boasts of this glorious past
(which erroneously included Jenghiz Khan and Attila the Hun among the
Turkish celebrities) served as an escape from the misery of the day.
3. A group of modern Turkish writers, poets and intellectuals (mostly
professionals) after vacillating for some time between a commitment to a
nationalist movement «to the people» and a more grandiose scheme of reviving
pre-Islamic Turkism by uniting all the Turks of Asia and Mesopotamia,
chose the latter. They argued that, the illiterate, backward, and poverty strick
en Turks who inhabited the thousands of Anatolian villages could not be the
foundation of conscious Turkish nationalism.
With the despair and humiliation of military defeat by the four small
and once subject Balkan nations of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece
in 1913, pan-Turkism or Turanism became a burning desire.
This strategy was, however, as unrealistic as Ottomanism because it
required a unity with the unknown Turks of alien lands, rather than the revi
talization of the real Turkish people of the Empire.
Turanism was a racist and expansionist program which was glorified
by both the Turkish youth of the time and the revolutionary Young Turk
1. Berkes, ibid., p. 428.

48 Doğu Ergil
organization of the Committee of Union and Progress. It became govern

ment policy when the CUP came to power as a political party.
«The collapse, too, of Pan-Islamism through Arab uprising

against the Ottoman Empire to Pan-Turkism. Increasingly the lit
erary figures of Turkism turned from the discomforting reality
of the Turkish people to the pre-Islamic Turkish mythology
and epic»1.
This movement also gave birth to «... a romantic literature devoid of

any connection with the people — neither reflecting them nor even reaching
them»1 2. In the final assessment, this escapist nationalism wasted the revolu
tionary potential of an entire generation.
This foolish ideology greatly affected both the politics of the Young Turks
after they came to power and the fate of the Empire which they ruled. Now
let us turn to Young Turk politics between 1913 and 1918.
POLITICS OF THE YOUNG TURKS IN THE BOURGEOIS

REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD:
BREAKING THE POWER OF THE ULEMA AND THE PALACE BUREAUCRACY
Young Turks saw themselves as the representatives of the whole nation,

but the CUP regime never intended to broaden «the power structure to in
clude or even serve the urban workers and peasants»3. The Young Turks
were not interested in equality and fraternity between persons who were not
social equals or in freedom of expression for those who wished to organize
workers and peasants in support of their class interests. Class conflict
was denied in social theory and practice.
Their philosophy of modernization was «reform from above». They were
elitists in their political program, and believed in a vanguard cadre or a
(middle-) class that would realize the modernization of the backward Empire.
As a revolutionary cadre, the CUP undertook the creation of a modem entre
preneurial class. But first they needed a loyal and efficient State apparatus,
and unchallenged authority to implement their radical program. Two tradi
tional social classes stood in their way: the ulema and the fossilized Ottoman
bureaucracy. They simultaneously attacked both.
One of the first measures which the Young Turks took when they came
1. Ibid.
2. F. Ahmad., op. cit., p. 162.
3. Berkes, loc. cit., pp. 415-416.
to power in 1913 was the secularization of the State machinery. They elimin
ated the Seyh-iil Islam from the Cabinet in 1916.The Şeriat courts were trans
ferred from the jurisdiction of the Seyh-iil Islam to that of theMinistry of
Justice. Similarly, the medreses were transferred from the jurisdiction of
the Seyh-iil Islam to the Ministry of Education. But the final blow came to
the economic independence of the ulema and other men of religion when the
evkaf administration (pious foundations or religious endowments whose
income sustained institutions like mosques and medreses, and their personnel)
was transferred from the jurisdiction of the Seyh-iil Islam to that of the
new Ministry of Evkaf1.
Two additional laws were passed in 1917 which were intended to sever
religious authority from legislation. The first of these was the Law ofSériai
Court procedure. It was an important step towards the unification of the
judicial procedure. The second was the Law of Family Rights1 2. These Laws
were important steps toward the secularization of the legal system.
After undermining the power of the ulema, the Young Turks turned
their attention to the traditional Ottoman bureaucracy. Reformation of the
top-heavy civilian bureaucracy which had started in the earlier period was
continued with forced retirements of redundant and corrupt officials3.
But the largest purge came later in 1913, after the defeat in the Balkans
of the troops under the command of old Ottoman Paşas. The Minister of
War, izzet Paşa, was forced to resign. Lt. Colonel Enver Bey was advanced
two ranks to Brigadier General and appointed Minister of War. On January
4, 1914 Generalissimo Enver Paşa eliminated all officers who were not gra
duates of the recently created modern War Academies. Shortly thereafter
he purged all Ottoman generals over the age of 554 5and a high level German
military mission was invited to carry out a new program of military training
and re-organization6.
These administrative reforms and the rejuvenation of the State appar-
1. J. N. D. Anderson, Islamic Law in the Modern World, New York 1959, pp. 26-27;
L. Bouvat, «Le code familial Ottoman de 1917», Revue de Monde Musulman XLIII (1921),
5-26.
2. Annual Report of the British Embassy in Istanbul, 1908, from Lowter to Grey no.
105, February 17, 1909, BFO 371/768/7053, PRO, London.
3. Halil Menteşe, Cumhuriyet, November 3, 1946; H. Bayur, op, cit,, П, pp. 316-317.
4. Liman von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, Annapolis 1927. Von Sanders was the
General in command of the German Military Mission. He remained throughout the war
in Turkey. His memoirs are a valuable source of historical information.
5. Stamboul (a Levantine newspaper published in Istanbul), March 17, 1914; Mallet
to Grey, no. 47, January 25, 1914, BFO 371/2128/4586, PRO, London.
4
50 Doğu Ergil
atus and army were coupled with a set of regulations prepared by the CUP on
the conduct of the Royal family. The members of the Royal family were no
longer permitted to take part in politics or even to take political positions1.
By 1914 the Young Turks were firmly in power. They had either elimin
ated or repressed their political rivals. A series of successful social reforms
had given them the hope that the State could be saved after all. But the most
necessary achievement for the salvation of the Empire, economic independence,
was yet unaccomplished.
Seeking ways to consolidate their political power with economic security,
the Young Turks did not vacillate much in finding a nokta-i istinat or fulcrum
on which economic nationalism would be based1 2. 3 A national bourgeois class
would be created to accomplish national development. The Young Turks
apparently saw themselves as the vanguard of this nascent class. They did
not clearly realize the difficulties of creating a national bourgeoisie in a neo
colonial context; at the same time they did not try to mobilize the largest
class of the nation, the peasantry. The vast rural masses (roughly 90 percent
of the population)8 were left in their squalor and isolation from national
politics.
The peasantry was perpetually squeezed by the tax-farmers, usurers and
semi-feudal landlords ( ağ as). Although it was the peasantry whose labor
created more than half of the GNP (between 1907 and 1914)4 and paid for
the incessant loans borrowed from abroad, they received very little in return.
It was the peasantry who died on the battlefields. Despite all these services
they were still punished and imprisoned when they failed to pay (or resisted)
the exorbitant taxes imposed on them.
They were the victims of the arbitrary and sudden conscriptions to carry
on the incessant wars of the Empire5. * *There are many historical accounts
of raids on the villages by the Government to augment the decimated Ottoman
1. Yusuf Akçura, Türk Yurdu, No. 63, April 3, 1330 A. H.; also, idem, Türk Yurdu,
No. 140, August 12, 1333 A.H., pp. 2521-2522; Ahmed Emin Yalman, Turkey in the World
War, New Haven 1930, p. 114.
2. Kemal Karpat, «An Inquiry..p. 107 fn. 138.
3. Tevfik Çavdar, op. cit., p. 99.
4. Mustafa Kemal to Enver and Talat Paşas, quoted in Doğan Avcioğlu, Milli Kurtuluş
Tarihi, op. cit., Ш, p. 952.
5 Turkey, from 1450 to 1900, was at war for an average of 30.5 of every 50 years.
Since the late 15th century, she has only been at peace for more than 15 years four times.
In the 20th century Turks fought not only internally against the nationalist movements of
the Ottoman Empire, but with Italy in 1911-1912, with the Balkan States in 1912-1913,
in the World War of 1914-1918, and finally for their national liberation following the
World War; 1919-1922.
armies on the wide battle fronts of the First World War. Since they refused to
join the military for wars in unknown lands stretching from Yemen to Ru
mania for an indefinite number of years (for there was no definite period of
service under the extraordinary conditions of the last decade of Ottoman
history), many peasants were collected through government raids on the
villages. Handcuffed and lined up like prisoners, several generations (men
between 17-55)1 left their villages for the Balkan, Arab (Yemen and Libya)
and World Wars.
Almost nothing was given back to the villages in return for this economic
and human loss. Illiteracy was more than 90 percent and public works rarely
extended beyond a few major cities1 2. The health of the Anatolian population
was left to breath healers and agriculture was left in the hands of those who
would pray for rain. The peasants’ cynicism and justifiable contempt for
authority were the result of long centuries of exploitation and repression.
Given their ignorance of peasant life and their contempt for peasants
themselves, the Young Turks’ cadres easily abandoned their brief populism
(represented by the young Ziya Gökalp in the form of cultural Turkism that
sought the roots of Turkish culture in village life) and instead developed two
different programs consonant with their Westernist and pan-Turkist ideology.
First they hoped to create the social class from which the Young Turk
cadre would derive its political support. This class would be the vanguard of
Turkish economic and political nationalism. Since the social equivalent of
such a class in the West was the bourgeoisie, the Young Turk cadre, through
out the period they remained in power, sought ways to create and sustain a
national bourgeoisie of which they would be a part.
This policy finds its best interpretation in the words of Kara Kemal
Bey, one of the most influential leaders of the Union and Progress:
«Governments in Europe rely either on the working or the bour
geois classes. They enjoy a social support which they can draw
on in difficult moments. Which class shall we rely on? ... Is there
such a powerful class in Turkey?... Since there is none, why
shouldn’t we create one?3
Such a policy was in perfect harmony with the Westernist outlook of the
new Turkish intelligentsia who believed that the new entrepreneurial class
1. T. Çavdar, op. ciu, pp. 104-105; H. Reşit Tankut, Köylerimiz, Ankara 1939, No.
31.
2. Osman Nuri, op. cit., I, p, 721.
3. Grey to Lowter (Grey Papers) London, November 13, 1908 BFO 800/185 A; also,
Lowter to Grey No. 546, September 6, 1908, BFO 371/559/31790, PRO, London.
52 Doğu Ergi1
that would be created by the State would be the motor force behind independent
capitalist economic growth. This strategy they believed would make Turkey
a major world power once again. There is evidence that the Young Turks
wanted to see the Ottoman Empire «as the Japan of the West» and even con
sidered inviting Japanese experts to help them in their program for modern
ization. But this idea was found very «resentful» by the British Foreign Of
fice1.
The doctrine of modernization from above, utilizing State power to en
hance capitalist development, was reinforced with the news that rich Turkish
capitalists prospered in Azerbaijan, on the banks of the Caspian Sea, Crimea
and other Russian territories inhabited by Turks. The bearers of this news
were a group of migrant Turkish intellectuals who had emigrated from Russia
during the period of Russian expansion into the Caucasus and south Asia,
which gained momentum at the turn of the century. They joined the ranks
of the Young Turks at a time when the latter were looking for a way to save
the Empire from its desperate economic and social condition.
These migrants became the major exponents of pan-Turkist ideology1 2.
Their aim was to liberate all other Turks suffering under foreign yoke.
However, pan-Turkists were neither Anatolian nationalists nor populists.
«For them nationality meant race»3, or Turanism: incorporation of all Asiat
ic Turks into one transcontinental state. This ideal contradicted neither West
ernism nor Islamism, but rather added an attractive imperialist color to the
Young Turk ideology. Turanians were also, and very conveniently, firm be
lievers in private enterprise, and the responsibility of the State to support the
emergent entrepreneurial classes4.
The grandiose scheme to rebuild the Empire through the incorporation
of Muslim Turks of rich Asiatic lands (Turan), in other words to cure a
decaying empire that had fallen victim to superior imperialist powers with a
new imperialism, inevitably led the Young Turks to clash with the dominant
imperialist powers of the time.
Due to the fact that the majority of Turkic people under Russian domi
nion were Muslims, pan-Islamism never completely ceased to be a part of the
1. The most prominent among these Turkists were Yusuf Akçura, Ahmed Agayev
(Ağaoğlu) and Halim Sabit. It has been claimed that Yusuf Akçura's writings have «played
a role similar to that of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 for the Marxists». Charles W.
Hostler, Turkism and the Soviets, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1957, p. 145.
3. Yusuf Akçura, op. cit.. No. 63, pp. 2102-2103; idem. Siyaset ve iktisat, Istanbul
1923, p. 140 ff.; N. Berkes, ibid. pp. 424-427.
4. Sir Reader Bullard, Britain and the Middle East, London 1951, pp. 48-80.
Young Turk ideology. From its inception in the heyday of economic imperi
alism this utopian and anachronistic imperialist policy based on race and rel
igion was doomed to failure. Nevertheless, it was supported and even financed
by Germany, Turkey’s ally in the World War, because pan-Turkism was anti-
Russian, and pan-Islamism anti-British, in character. As is well-known,
the two deadliest enemies of Germany and her expansionist policy toward
the Asiatic markets and the rich petroleum resources of the Middle East were
Russia and Britain1.
In addition to devising utopian schemes to save the State, the Unionist
government also took some more meaningful steps toward economic inde
pendence. Now let us see how the Young Turks’ economic development
program evolved through time.
FROM LIBERALISM TO STATISM:

THE EVOLUTION OF YOUNG TURK ECONOMIC THOUGHT
The Young Turks’ economic program underwent a dramatic change

parallel to their political program. At first, in their liberal-reformist period,
the various factions and ideologues had no real understanding of the difference
between the economies and social structures of the industrialized and agrarian
countries12. Moreover, they did not understand the development of their own
society. In this respect, the intellectual evolution of one of the most influential
Young Turk leaders (leader of the European section of the CUP in exile),
Ahmed Riza Bey, is a good example.
Ahmed Riza was an agronomist by profession. He chose this discipline
to aid in the development of the stagnant Turkish agriculture, and raise the
standard of rural Turkey3. He received his education in France and return
ed home to join the Ministry of Agriculture in the last decade of the Hamidian
regime. Unable to do anything positive in this Ministry, Ahmed Riza reached
the conclusion that «'the ignorance of the peasantry was an obstacle to their
understanding the need for the application of modern agricultural methods’;
he shifted to the Ministry of Education because, 'education was the best way
to enlighten people’s mind’s. It was while he was a director of education that
1. Mehmed Cavit, «Neşriyat ve Vekayi-i iktisadiye», Ulum-u içtimaiye ve iktisadiye

Mecmuası, П, No. 5 (May 1909); and later writings in Nos. 6, 7, 8 and 9 clearly reveal that
even the Minister of Finance of the Young Turk Government was no different from other
Turkish intellectuals of the time in recognizing the roots of Turkish underdevelopment.
2. His ideas on this issue are written in his Layihalarım, lithographed in London in
1859. He sent these writings to Sultan Abdul Hamid.
54 Doğu Ergil
Riza resigned in disgust. ,»1 with the inefficiency of the Hamidian education
al system and went to Paris.
Ahmed Riza was not alone in his optimistic formulas for economic re
covery. All Young Turks before and even for some time after the 1908 re
volution believed that the loss of financial and political independence was due
to the past despotism of the Ottoman polity. The remedy for this was present
ed by Sabahaddin Bey: economic liberalism, private enterprise and political
decentralization. These institutions would put an end to any form of collective
activity or organization surviving as the legacy of the classical Ottoman politi
cal economy1 2.
Sabahaddin Bey and many other Young Turks who supported economic
liberalism were against the capitulatory regime not only because it was de
trimental to the creation of an independent national economy, but also be
cause it was completely contrary to laissez faire liberal capitalism. Since the
major Western powers glorified laissez faire, they naively believed these
powers would, if properly approached, be willing to revoke the capitulations
voluntarily and also finance a development program which, through free trade,
would lead to the mutual enrichment of all the nations involved.
In this respect Cavit Bey, the future Minister of Finance of the Union
and Progress government, wrote in 1909:
«... in my opinion, we must accept foreigners in such enter

prises for the sake of establishing a skill, that of management
and rationalization, which we lack so badly. As to important
public works, these can be done only with foreign capital... All
countries in a state of opening themselves to civilization will
inevitably stumble and fall in their new path if they seek to ad
vance by their own forces... All new countries have been able
to advance only with the help of foreign capital»3.
But Cavit Bey’s own solicitations in England and France as a Minister

were turned down by Western financiers and Governments in 19114. Through
these experiences the Young Turks finally came to understand that European
statesmen and bankers were not in reality the disciples of Adam Smith and
1. Prince Sabahaddin, op. cit.

2. Mehmed Cavit, «Neşriyat ve Vekay-i iktisadiye», Ulum-u içtimaiye ve iktisadiye
Mecmuası, Π, No. 5 (May 1909), 129-30.
3. N. Berkes, op. cit., p. 334.
’ 4. Only the Germans, who had their own plans in the Near and Middle East, extended
this credit on November 7,1911. This marked the beginning of a Turco-German friendship
that would continue until the end of World War I.
J. B. Say. The world powers refused to alter the capitulations, and refused to
lend a penny to the Turkish government without first receiving concessions
and further privileges1.
Only through bitter experience did Young Turks abandon their naive
ideas about national development. When, after the summer of 1913, an
other Young Turk request to raise custom dues and for alterations in the
capitulatory regime was turned down by the Europeans1 2, Young Turk liber
alism turned into statism and the polite solicitations to European powers for
economic favors were rejected in favor of a diplomatic struggle which cul
minated in the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the World War against the Allied
Powers.
Still, the Young Turks’ firm belief in capitalist development and the need
to create a national bourgeois class and their own roots within this class,
limited the extent to which they could transform the social structure of Turk
ish society. Their reform program did not affect the peasantry and the tiny
industrial working class (75,411 in 1922)3. Instead, in their radical period,
much of the Young Turk liberalism gave way to statism and to the ideals of
solidarity and national unity4. 5
As implied in the name of the Party in power (Union and Progress) they
were against any deviation from their corporatist program, and the goals
of their centralist rule. For only through these political institutions could they
remain as the new ruling class of the Empire. For this reason, the fourth
emerging ideology of the time, Socialism, (in contrast to Islamism, West
ernism, and Turanism) was repressed both in action and publication. Let
us briefly look at the Unionist policy vis à vis the emergent leftist ideology
and organizations.
The first Socialist organization in Turkish history appeared in the re
latively political atmosphere of the second Constitutional period before the
Young Turk regime acquired its authoritarian character. The «Ottoman
Socialist Party» (Osmanli Sosyalist Firkasi) was founded in September
1910. «It was the first party in Turkey which had a doctrine of class struggle
among sundry other political parties with different programs»6.
1. F. Ahmad, pp. 140-141.

2. Turkish State Institute of Statistics, Türkiye’de Toplumsal çe Ekonomik Gelişme
nin 50 Yili, Ankara 1973, p. 41.
3. This issue is raised by Akçura in Türk Yurdu, No. 140 (August 12, 1333 A. H.),
p. 2521 ff.
4. F. Hüsrev Tökin, Türk Tarihinde Siyasi Partiler, İstanbul 1965, p. 48; Muzaffer
Sencer, Türkiye’de Siyasal Partilerin Sosyal Temelleri, İstanbul 1971, p. 57.
5. M. Sencer, ibid.; Tunaya, op. cit., pp. 304-306.
56 Doğu Ergil
The founders of the Party advocated the nationalization of all means of

production, banks, railroads and insurance companies; abolition of mono
polies; a progressive taxation system; freedom of speech and publication;
abolition of capital punishment; annulment of all laws and regulations
forbidding the right of strike and unionization of workers. It demanded an
eight-hour working day and one day off per week for workers; free education
for all social classes, and the creation of a Ministry of Labor which would
protect workers’ rights and their syndicates1.
The Party’s press organs were newspapers like iştirak, Sosyalist, Mua-
hade and insaniyet. Each of these journals was closed by the Young Turk
government after a brief period of publication. The Party had no members
in the Parliament which was thoroughly controlled by the Union and Progress,
but some left-leaning Christian deputies did introduce their ideas to the Par
liament.
The Party’s active role in workers’ strikes of Istanbul, Turkey’s most
important city, led to the prosecution and later deportation of its leaders
—Hüseyin Hilmi, Ismail Faik, and Hamid Suphi— in 1911, one year after its
establishment1
2.
Another center for leftist organizations at this time was Salonica. We
have no evidence of a direct relationship between the Balkan leftist organiza
tions and their Istanbul counterpart, but it seems that the leftist front in
Rumeli (European Turkey) was stronger and better organized. The close
contact of Rumeli cities with other Balkan centers and leftist movements like
the Bulgarian and Roumanian socialist movements may explain this fact3.
The workers’ activities organized by leftist elements in Salonika were
soon recognized by a hostile government which issued the order quoted below
to the Governor of Salonica on November 1, 1911:
(dt has been recognized that workers of Salonika are organ

izing in syndicates (unions)... The establishment of Social
ist ideas and practices will gradually destroy the local com
merce. .. For this reason not only is the issuance of more per
mits (for the formation of new unions) a matter of hesitance...
1. Adan Sayilgan, Türkiye’de Sol Hareketler (1871-1972), Istanbul 1972, p. 71;

Fethi Tevetoğlu, Türkiye’de Sosyalist ve Komünist Faaliyetleri. 1910-1966, Ankara, 1967,
p. 18.
2. Walter Z. Laqueur, Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East, London,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957, p. 207; Oya Sencer, Türkiye’de işçi Sinifi, Istanbul 1969,
p. 169.
3. The Levant Herald, Istanbul, June 29, 1912; T. Z. Tunaya, op. cit., p. 306 fn. 10.
(but also) the necessity of annulment of established syndicates

is considered))1.
After 1910 the government moved to close down all Socialist clubs, or
ganizations and Parties.
The hostile attitude held by the Young Turk government toward the
workers and peasants was not even altered by the writings of Alexander
Helphand alias Parvus. Parvus was a Russian Marxist revolutionary who
had served in the Petersburg Soviet with Trotsky and later escaped to Istanbul
from Siberia where he had been banished by the Tsarist regime1 2. 3 He was a
prolific writer and theoretician. It was he who introduced Young Turks to the
Leninist theory of imperialism. He called for the abolition of the capitu
latory regime as the first step in the destruction of Western imperialism in
Turkey. Only in this way could a Turkish bourgeois class be provided with a
milieu protected by the State from European economic penetration.
In accordance with the Marxist view of the time, however, he did not
believe that Turkey could create a socialist system by «skipping stages». The
precondition for socialism was capitalism. Only after the establishment of a
national capitalist system would the inevitable contradictions of class conflict
emerge®.
Parvus’ ideas on imperialism and his competent description of how the
Westerners exploited Turkish economic resources were indeed educational
for the Young Turks, few of whom had any substantial knowledge of econom
ics. Although it is hard to assess Parvus’ impact on the Young Turk economic
policies, many of his ideas can be readily detected in the Party programs of
Union and Progress. We believe that the 1913 Party program is the most
conspicuous example of Parvus’ influence on the later period of Young Turk
thought.
The political program drawn up in the 1913 Party (of Union and Progress)
Congress included provisions for the financing of long-term, low-interest
capital loans for Turkish agriculture and industry. Aid to farmers «who owned
land» was the primary goal of Article 18 of the Program. For this purpose
1. Max Beer, Fifty Years of International Socialism, London 1935, p. 195; G. H.

D. Cole, TheSecond International, 1889-1914: A History of Socialist Thought, London
1956, Ш, pp. 489, 492, 501, 956-958.
2. Parvus, Türkiye’nin Can Damari, Istanbul, 1330 A- H., is the most comprehensive
of his writings where he employs the Leninist theory of imperialism to the Turkish case,
and analyzes the history of Turkish underdevelopment.
3. T. Z. Tunaya, op. cit., pp. 204-205; Kemal Karpat, Turkey’s Politics, New Jersey,
Princeton Univ. Press, 1959, p. 83.
58 Doğu Ergit
a National Credit Bank was opened in January 1917. Under the auspices of
the bank, other enterprises were begun. First, two insurance companies were
opened1. These were followed by other companies founded with private capi
tal. For their unrestricted development, Article 19 called for a «freer» milieu
within which the commercial bourgeoisie would flourish. The abolition of
archaic and harmful laws that restricted free market forces was proposed.
Article 30 envisaged the codification of a «Law of Industrial Incentives» that
would encourage private enterprise. Most of these proposals were carried
out with at least some success.
A complementary policy encouraged consumers’ co-operatives. A «So
ciety for National Consumption» was founded as early as 1913. The Society
launched a large-scale campaign to encourage the consumption of home-
produced instead of imported goods1 2. Many consumers’ co-operatives ap
peared in the capital and functioned successfully until the end of the World
War.
The Unionist Government was also instrumental in organizing the Turk
ish commercial bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie into a number of import-
export companies, producer co-operatives, and credit institutions. All were
created through the contribution of national capital3.
Furthermore, various branches of traditional arts and crafts were orga
nized within a modernized guild-system in the hope that they would devote
themselves to the complementary production of raw and finished goods. The
architect of this program was Kara Kemal Bey.
These organizational efforts were supported by local branches of the
Union and Progress throughout the country. But the Unionists recognized
that these measures would be insufficient if the capitulatory regime were to
remain intact and the minority and foreign compradore bourgeoisie were to
preserve their superiority in the national economy. Consequently, foreign
companies were required to have a certain number of Ottoman subjects on
their boards of directors, and concessionary companies were required to keep
their books and administer business transactions in Turkish4. This, and
similar legislation, had little practical impact on Ottoman economic depend
ence.
The decisive blow against foreign and minority economic superiority
in the Ottoman domain would be delivered, the Young Turks hoped, with the
1. Haluk Cillov, «Les Recensements industriels en Turquie», Istanbul Universitesi

iktisat Fakültesi Dergisi ХШ (1951-1952), 163 ff.; B. Lewis, op. cit., p. 459.
2. F. H. Tökin, op. cit., p. 9.
4. K. Karpat, op. cit., p. 83; Lewis, ibid., p. 459.
abolition of capitulation in 1914.The second article of the 1913 Party Program

deemed it «a sacred duty of utmost importance to abolish the totality of capi
tulations». A last attempt in 1913-1914 to abolish the capitulations through
negotiations with Europeans came to nothing1. The Ottoman Government
unilaterally abrogated all economic and legal restrictions and entered the
World War on the side of Imperial Germany which supported the Young
Turks’ radical move. Now let us follow more closely the dramatic evolution
of the Young Turk Government’s policies toward economic independence.
BREAKING THE POWER OF THE FOREIGN AND

MINORITY COMPRADORE BOURGEOISIE:
ARMENIAN AND GREEK OPERATIONS OF THE UNION AND PROGRESS
The Armenian Case. The British, French and Russian pressures on

Turkey throughout the 19th century to protect the rights of Christian minori
ties in the Ottoman Empire were aimed mainly at protecting a Levantine class
whose economic role was as the middlemen of the West. This stratum func
tioned as the representatives of European manufacturers in the Anatolian hin
terland, Iran, and the interior of Asia12, and also directed the flow of raw
materials from the Empire and Levant back to Europe. Another aim of the
Western activities on behalf of the Christian minorities was to encourage se
cessionist movements among the diverse nationalities of the Empire. Because
of these movements, many small and dependent nations would be much easier
to control. Moreover, the British Foreign Office believed that an autonomous
but small Armenia, dependent on England for protection, would act as a
buffer zone between the Russian and Turkish Empires, blocking their expan
sion toward the Middle Eastern oil fields and trade routes. On the other hand,
Russia also saw Armenia «as a barrier between possible Turkish 'Pan-Turan-
ism’ ambitions and the oil fields of Baku»3.
After the realization of a Turco-German alliance between 1913 and 1914,
Armenian independence took on a different meaning for the British and
1. Ömer Celal Sarç, «Tanzimat ve Sanayiimiz», Tanzimat, Istanbul 1940, p. 423 ff.;
Doğan Avcioğlu, Türkiye'nin Düzeni, Ankara 1968, pp. 52-56; G. Bie Ravndal, The Ori
gin of the Capitulations and the Consular Institutions 67th Congress, 1st Session, Sen
ate, Doc. No. 34, Washington 1921, p. 34 ff.
2. A. Toynbee, The Western ..., op. cit., p. 42.
3. Henry Woodhouse, «American Oil Claims in Turkey», The New York Times Cur
rent History XV, No. 6, March 1922, pp. 953-959; Z. Y. Herslag, Introduction To The
Modern Economic History of The Middle East, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1964, pp. 51, 167,
Appendix 31.
60 Doğu Ergil
French. They hoped it would help to block German expansion toward the
East (Drang nach Osten). Western imperialist policies in Turkey (mainly
British) reached their climax with the building of the Berlin-Baghdad railway
by the Germans. The United States, which had recently recognized the rich
economic potential of the area was also in favor of this policy1.
With foreign (mainly British) aid and American missionary support, two
nationalist-revolutionary organizations, the Dashnak and the more radical
Honchak, began their secessionist campaign towards the turn of the century1 2. 3
Turco-Armenian confrontations began in 1890 in Erzurum, an Eastern
Turkey town, and quickly spread to other regions. The immediate aim of the
rebellion was to invite foreign intervention against the Turkish «oppressors»8.
But, Sultan Abdul Hamid quickly organized the nomadic Kurdish tribes into
cavalry regiments (Hamidiye Alayları) based on the Russian Cossack ex
ample and suppressed the first major wave of Armenian rebellions.
During the Young Turk administration, the Armenian Rebellion took
the form of widespread inter-ethnic warfare between the Turkish and
Armenian populations, first in Eastern Anatolia, later in the South-east. An
enormous number of men died in these struggles. The relations between the
local Turkish and Armenian populations deteriorated with each passing year.
During the Turco-Russian struggles in the World War, Turkish armies
suffered considerably from Armenian support of the Russian forces. They
deserted the Turkish armies, joined the Russian forces, or engaged in fifth-
column activities behind the battle lines4. *
In vain. Commander in Chief Enver Paşa, repeatedly asked the Armenian
Patriarch to halt the Armenian hostilities toward the Turks. Finally, in
frustration, the Unionist Government on May 14, 1915 issued the famous
Deportation Ьа.ч/( Tehcir Kanunu).The plan to deport hundreds of thousands
of Armenians to Mesopotamia «to clear the battle-ground» was written and
carried out largely by the secret revolutionary «Special Organization» ( Teşki-
lat-i Mahsusa) of the Union and Progress. According to the European sources,
1. Richard G. Hovannisian, Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918, Los Angeles

1967; The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, Documents pre
sented by Viscount Bryce to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, London 1916.
2. Bryce to Grey, ibid., passim; Ş. S. Aydemir, Enver Paşa, op. cit., Ш, pp. 119-
156.
3. Bryce, ibid., Aydemir, ibid.; Kazim Karabekir, istiklal Harbimiz, Istanbul 1960,
p. 281 ff.; Sahattin Selek, Anadolu ihtilali, Istanbul 1973, p. 20; Esat Uras, Tarihte Ermeni-
ler ve Ermeni Meselesi, Ankara 1950, p. 71 ff.:
4. Bryce to Grey, op. cit., p. 664; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1926, 2 vols., Washington, 1941, II, pp. 986-990.
between 800,000 and 1,200,000 people were deported or killed in this oper
ation1.
Talat Paşa (the last Unionist Prime Minister) justified this drastic policy
in discussion with U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau by pointing out that conflict
between the Turks and Armenians was inevitable for three reasons. First,
Armenians, aided by foreign nations, had prospered at the expense of the
Turkish people. Second, the Armenians were determined to dominate
Turks in areas even where they were not a majority by establishing an inde
pendent state. Third, throughout the Turco-Russian conflict in the first years
of the World War, they had aided the Russians on the Eastern front and
played a crucial role in the Turkish defeat at the Sarıkamış battles in 1915.
Thus their power had to be broken1 2.
However, the Turco-Armenian strife continued after 1915, passing

through three dramatic stages: the Russian-Armenian invasion of Eastern
and North-Eastern Turkey and Armenian revenge in 1916; their withdrawal
in 1917 following the Bolshevik Revolution; and finally, following the World
War and Turkey’s occupation by Allied forces.
«The French Government made use of the Armenians in a dif
ferent way. They promised to erect an autonomous Armenian
State, under their aegis, in the Cilician Part of their Anatolian
Zone, and the promise brought them several thousand Arme
nian volunteers, most of whom were enrolled in the Legion ď Ca
rient and served for the rest of the war»3.
We will elaborate on these events later.
The Greek Case. Another drastic move against the anti-national compra-
dore minority was directed towards the Greeks — especially of Western
Anatolia, where they were most concentrated. The Young Turks’ conflict
with Greece started as part of a series of international crises, right after their
successful coup ďétat in 1908. On November 5, 1908 Bulgaria declared her
independence under Russian protection. The next day Austria-Hungary
declared her annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the same day Greece
annexed the island of Crete, violating the provisions of the Congress of Berlin
(1878). Tne Ottoman protests to the signatory powers of the Congress went
unheeded and these countries retained their gains.
The hostile attitude of Westerners was most conspicuous in the British
1. H. Bayur, op. cit., II, Part Ш, p. 87; D. Avcioğlu, Milli..., Ш, pp. 1131-1153; Andrei
Nikolaevich Mandelstam, Le Sort de l'Empire ottoman, Lausanne 1917, pp. 240, 248.
2. A. Toynbee, loc. cit., p. 51.
3. Ibid.
62 Doğu Ergil
case. Great Britain backed «Greece against Turkey because an aggrandised

Greece dependent on British support»1 would give her pre-eminence over
her rivals in the Near East.
«These hostile acts aroused great indignation throughout the Ottoman
Empire»1 2. 3Unprepared and unable to answer these encroachments through
military action, the Young Turks (under the auspices of the local committees
of the Union and Progress) skillfully channeled this surge of resentment into
an effective and organized boycott of Austrian and Greek products and ser
vices8. The main victims of the economic boycott soon became the Greek
merchants, producers and transporters who controlled most of Turkey’s
import-export commerce and maritime transport. With a systematic program
the Young Turks tried to push them into bankruptcy.
The pressure on the Christian, especially Greek, minorities, worsened
after Greece annexed Mytilini and Khios in 1909 and Western Thrace at the
end of the Balkan War (1912-1913). The popular feeling already aroused
by the boycott against Greeks was re-enforced by the stories of atrocities
against, and pitiful conditions of, the Turkish migrants from the Balkans.
«... The arrival of the Rumelian (European Turkish) refugees
from the end of 1912 onward produced an unexampled feeling of
tension in Anatolia and a desire for revenge... Their numbers
were so great4 that they appreciably affected the population...
The hundreds of thousands of refugees who arrived at Constan
tinople, and kept arriving after the conclusion of peace, were des
titute and terror-stricken»5. 6 *
Following these events the boycott against Anatolian Greeks took on

the character of an open economic and para-military warfare between the
two peoples. While the economic boycott was being carried out with great
vigor, para-military bands were enrolled from among the Rumeli refugees
and local citizens who had long been envious of Greek prosperity in the re
gion®. Inter-ethnic struggle and economic boycott continued throughout

2. Ali Fuad Türkgeldi, Görüp işittiklerim, Ankara 1951, p. 10.
3. The extent of human suffering and population dislocations in the Balkan War can
be found in Report of the International Commission to inquire into the Causes and Con
duct of the Balkan War, Washington D. C., Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
1914, p. 71 ff.
4. A. Toynbee, loc. cit., pp. 138, 139.
5. Ibid., p. 140.
6. Henry Morgenthau (American Ambassador to Turkey), Secrets of the Bosphorus
1913-1916, London, Hutchinson, 3rd ed. 1921, p. 42 ff.
the period 1914 to 1916.

This was not all. The Unionist government asked all foreign firms of
Izmir (then the biggest city of Anatolia after Istanbul) to fire their Greek
employees and hire Turks instead. Even the U.S. Ambassador’s pleas to
exempt the Singer Company from this purge were unsuccessful1. Muslim
preachers supported the boycott through their daily sermons in the mosques.
French commerce conducted mainly through the mediation of the Greeks
began to suffer in the East Mediterranean. Consequently, the French Foreign
Minister Pichon protested against the Turkish boycott and threatened the
Young Turk government with Western intervention1 2.
Under the leadership of Enver Paşa (the most aggressive member of the
ruling cadre) a more drastic plan was formulated by the «Special Organisa
tion» of the Party against the Greeks. Composed of skilled guerilla fighters,
able staff officers, public orators and politicians, the «Special Organization»
moved in complete secrecy (even from the majority of the cabinet members)
to implement two basic strategies:
1. establishment of national banks, corporations, credit unions, and
wide-scale organization of Turkish local artisan groups of the Aegean region
in producers’ cooperatives;
2. intimidation and force against the rich Greeks of the region to leave
the area and migrate to Greece3.
For the first task, Celal Bayar Bey (later the Third President of the
Republic: 1950-1960) was appointed General Secretary of the Party of
Union and Progress in Izmir. For the second task, the young military and
civilian revolutionaries of the «Special Organization» were assigned the duty
of intimidating the Greek population of Western Turkey as clandestinely as
possible4.
The popular aim of the operation was the «nationalization of the Infidel
Izmir»5. 6 According to plan, approximately 130,000 Greeks were forced to
leave for Greece or the Aegean islands in 1914 from Bergama, Çeşme, Dikili,
Foça, Karaburun and Menemen— rich subdivisions of Izmir®. A government
was fighting against its own citizens for survival!
1. D. Avcioğlu, loc. cit., pp. 1117-1118.

2. Celal Bayar, Ben de Yendim, Istanbul 1969, vol. IV, p. 1584; Avcioğlu, loc.cit., pp.
1114-1122.
3. Ibid., (both sources).
4. These are the words of Eşref Kuşçubaşi, the leader of the «Special Organization»
( Teşcilati Mahsusa) which carried out the operation. Quoted in Celal Bayar's Ben de
Yazdım, loc. cit., pp. 1584-1585.
5. Arnold Toynbee, The Western ..., pp. 143-144; C. Bayar, ibid., p. 1585 ff.
6. C. Bayar, ibid.; D. Avcioğlu, loc. cit., pp. 1115.
64 Doğu Ergil
What was the outcome of this displacement policy? First, the strength
of the economically dominant minority compradore bourgeoisie and petty-
bourgeoisie was severely shaken. Some European businessmen living in
Turkey (Levantines) were also hurt1. Second, ousted Turkish migrants flow
ing in from the lost territories of the Empire in Europe were settled on the
properties and businesses of the exiled or displaced minorities. A number of
landless peasants also occupied some of this untenanted land.
Third, untenanted workshops and businesses of the displaced Christians
were to some extent taken over by the Turks. This phenomenon was in accord
ance with the Unionist desire to create a «national bourgeoisie». But, there
is no indication that the «instant» Turkish capitalists, or rather proprietors
were capable of developing a dynamic industrial economy. The destruction of
commercial relationships with foreign merchants and the insufficiency of the
domestic market doomed many of these workshops, mills and «factories» to
idleness or severely restricted their productive capacity. Evidence from studies
conducted decades later show that, for example, flour mills left over from the
Greeks were rented out to peasants by their owners, and the operator receiv
ed the due of his service in kind rather than money1 2. This way relations of
production continued to be as backward as they were earlier.
Fourth, some of the (best) lands and property left behind by the minorities
were confiscated by either local influential figures or powerful middle level
members of the Party3. Large tracts of land remained concentrated in the
hands of individuals, unavailable to the peasantry. Some of the formerly
property-less influentials (bureaucrats and politicians) of the time became
part of a new landed elite. This newly propertied group pushed the politics
of the Unionists, during their direct rule and the Republican era, in a conser
vative direction.
Fifth, the necessity of settling over 400,000 migrants4, and land occupa
tions by landless peasants, further fragmented the land or preserved its sub
sistence character. This factor delayed the capitalist development of Turkish
agriculture in later years.
1. Cavit Orhan TütengU, «A Study of the Village of Keçiler», Sosyoloji Dergisi 1955-
1956, (Istanbul 1956).
2. A. Toynbee, loc. cit., p. 138.
3 Today it is a well-known fact that the leading Young Turk triumvirate consisting of
Talat, Cemal and Enver Paşas, had only a very modest amount of money in their pockets
when they left the country in October 1918 in order to escape Allied prosecution. The same
can be said of the Minister of Finance Cavit Bey who had access to millions4. They had
not profited from these events.
4. Ş. S. Aydemir, Fnoer Paşa, op. cit., Ш, p. 494 ff.; Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın, Talat
Paşa, İstanbul 1943, pp. 48-56.
Sixth, in the plunder of Christian property left behind, by the local eşraf
(notables) and rural populations, lay the basis of a keen interracial or inter
communal conflict when the Armenians and Greeks of Anatolia started
returning after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Throughout 1919,
the Armenians returned under French uniform as a part of the French occupy
ing force. They were followed by Anatolian Greeks who returned under the
protection of Allied fleets and Greek armies. The story of the ensuing struggle
will be later elaborated in the section entitled, «The National Liberation Mo
vement».
The Young Turk Government was aware of the fact that as long as the
capitulatory regime existed, any measure to establish a sound basis for econ
omic independence was doomed to failure. So the next step had to be the aboli
tion of the capitulations. If the Turks wanted to survive as an independent
nation they had no other choice, and the Young Turks were bold enough to
fulfil this historical mission.
ABOLITION OF CAPITULATIONS AND

ARMED STRUGGLE AGAINST WESTERN CAPITALISM
The Young Turks have often been condemned for their identification
with Imperial Germany and for leading Turkey into World War I on the
German side, but Turkey’s turn towards Germany (and then the Soviet Union
after the First World War) can best be understood as an attempt to regain
its autonomy as an independent nation. Unfortunately, its effort to break
away from the Western Imperialist orbit through dependence on another
imperial power, Germany, proved fatal and the Ottoman State collapsed in
the Armageddon of world capitalism (1918). Now let us see how the course of
events took place.
The Young Turk government made several attempts to obtain the con
sent of each of the Powers concerned for the abrogation of the capitulatory
system. Their efforts were, however, futile, partly due to the difficulty caused
by the claims made by the chief powers for compensation1 2.
In October 1913 the Turkish Government formed a commission consisting
of Turkish and Foreign delegates to examine and propose changes in the
capitulatory system. Nothing came out of the Commissions proceedings.
1. Nasim Sousa, The Capitulatory Regime of Turkey, Baltimore, John Hopkins U.

Press, 1933, p. 186; from (Sir L.) Mallet to Grey (telegram) August 20,1914, in The Times,
London, Documentary History of the War, IX, «Diplomatie», part 3, pp. 101-102.
2. Cemal Paşa, Hatıralar, ed. Behçet Cemal, Istanbul 1959, p. 121 ff.; Ş. S. Aydemir,
loc. cit., II, pp. 503-509.
5
66 Doğu Ergil
The Unionist Government increasingly felt unprepared as Turkey was

just recuperating from the wounds of the 1912-1913 Balkan War disaster
and isolated with the threat of more war on the horizon. The Turkish govern
ment opened up negotiations with Russia, England and France1 to increase
the security of the country. But, as the secret documents of the Russian Im
perial Government released by the Bolshevik administration in 1917 revealed,
these countries had other plans. The partition of the Ottoman Empire was
already decided by secret talks between the Entente Powers1 2.
Increasingly worried about the security of the nation, the Young Turk
Government signed a secret treaty of alliance with Germany of August 2,
1914, the day after Germany declared war against Russia. This treaty of
fered equal terms to Turkey which no other government wanted to grant
at that time.
The efforts of the Ottoman government to win back her economic au
tonomy have already been discussed. Before entering the War, the Ottoman
Prime Minister Sait Halim Paşa for the last time declared that «the aboli
tion of the capitulations was imperative to avoid the involvement of Turkey
in the War»3. But nobody listened. Even the United States Government
showed a grim determination to preserve the Turkish Capitulatory regime4.
Talat Paşa, the last Prime Minister of the Unionist Government clearly
expressed this point in the dramatic last meeting of the Party of Union and
1. On November 22, 1917 Trotsky declared the Soviet Government’s intention of

publishing the secret treaties of the Tsarist Government and its allies. The secret treaties
were released shortly afterwards. Among these documents there were many hints as to
ongoing negotiations for new agreements that crystallized in the future years in four
secret treaties: 1) The «Constantinople Agreement» signed between Britain, France and
Russia on March 18, 1915. The text of this agreement can be found in the January 18,
1918 issue of the Manchester Guardian. 2) The «Secret Pact of London», signed between
Italy, France, Britain and Russia on April 26, 1915. The text of this treaty can be found
in the January 18, 1918 issue of the Manchester Guardian, and in BritishWhite Paper,
Cmd. 671 (Miscellaneous No. 7), London 1920. 3) The «Sykes-Picot Agreement», signed
between Britain, France and Russia on May 16, 1916. The text of this treaty can be found
in the January 8, 1920 issue of the Manchester Guardian, and the May 22, 1919 issue of
Le Temps. 4) The «St. Jean de Maurienne Agreement», signed between Britain, France and
Italy on April 17, 1917. The text of this agreement is in the January 9, 1920 issue of the
Manchester Guardian and the February 9, 1920 issue of the Chicago Daily News.
2. Nasim Sousa, op. cit., p. 187.
3. Ibid., pp. 191-192; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States,
1914, Washington 1922, pp. 1092-1093; Roger R. Trask, The United States Response to
Turkish Nationalism and Reform, 1914-1939, Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press,
1971, pp. 19-27.
4. Quoted in Ş. S. Aydemir, loc. cit., Ш, p. 480.
Progress before it abolished itself on October 1, 1918, and its leaders left
the country:
«We were pursuing a policy of allying ourself with a powerful

European nation. We had contacted the British and the French
and got negative results.
One day Prime Minister Sait Halim Paşa called Enver Paşa, Halil
Bey, and myself to his residence. He told us that the German
ambassador was offering a peace treaty on equal terms. He
asked for our opinion.
For the security and development of the country all three of us

converged on the opinion that such an alliance was necessary.
We gave a positive answer ...
The proposal of a powerful country for a treaty with the Otto

man Empire was a sign of a close war. We were not late in
realizing this. However, we could not guess that it would be a
general war. We thought we would save the country from all
kinds of dangers by entering into such an alliance.. .и1.
The price which the Ottoman Government had to pay for «equal» terms was
«entering the War on the side of Germany if Germany entered the War»
(Article 2 of the treaty)1 2.
It is ironic that in the excitement of signing the secret treaty, the three
Young Turk officials had forgotten to include the clause for the abrogation
of the capitulatory regime in the text of the treaty. Under pressure from other
top Party members they asked Baron von Wangenheim, the German ambas
sador and signatory to the original treaty to add a number of new clauses to
the treaty. Of special concern was a clause that would abrogate the capitula
tions. Instead, to satisfy the Unionist leaders, Wangenheim hastily wrote a
guarantee letter without authorization from his government3.
Encouraged by this flimsy guarantee and «the state of War between
European Powers (the Turkish Government) formally notified all the embas
sies in Constantinople that it would abrogate the capitulations beginning
1. Treaty Series No. 11 (1920). Treaty of Peace with Turkey. Signed at Sèvres, August
10, 1920, Cmd. 964, London.
2. Ş. S. Aydemir, loc. cit.. Π, pp. 516-520; Η. C. Yalçın (ed.), Talat Paşanın Hatı
raları, İstanbul 1946, pp. 124-128.
3. N. Sousa, op. cit., p. 189.
68 Doğu Ergil
October 1, 1914»1. The message also informed the powers that the govern
ment was intent on abolishing (foreign) restrictions imposed on the sovereign
rights of Turkey to determine the taxing rates within its own borders.
Beginning October 1, customs duties were raised to 14 and 15 percent,
and luxury items like first class clothing material and liquor were subject
to duties of 100 percent. Similarly on the same date foreign post offices which
operated outside the control of the Ottoman Government were closed. The
actions of the Ottoman Government were immediately protested by the United
States, Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Austria, and even Germany1 2. 3 * *
Cavit Bey, the Young Turk Finance Minister, relates in his personal
diary how Baron von Wangenheim (German ambassador) came and threaten
ed him although he had previously signed a letter of guarantee in his govern
ment’s name accepting the abrogation of the capitulations.
«Sept. 10, 1914, Wednesday:
Wangenheim came. He looked unnatural, almost insane... He

was unable to talk, but was mating sounds like barking. Our
discussion lasted approximately two hours... I wish our Ger
man-lovers could see these scenes ... Wangenheim was protest
ing because we made this decision (on the capitulations) uni
laterally. He was shouting that we couldn’t do such a thing
without their consent. He said that if tomorrow the British and
French declare war against us (the Ottomans) and start forc
ing the Straits, they would in no circumstance aid us...
Today in the afternoon he said, all the (foreign) ambassadors

will meet and render a mutual note of protest to the Turkish
government, and perhaps even Germany and Russia could agree
on a truce against Turkey»8.
Despite the fact that they were at each other’s throats on the battle field
1. For this united opposition see ĽEurope Nouvelle, sources et documents, August
17, 1929, Paris, p. xxv; From Grey to Mallet, The Times, London, Documentary History
of the War, K, pp. 104-105.
2. Mehmet Cavit, «Meşrutiyet Devrine Ait Cavit Beyin Hatıraları» serialized memoirs,
in Tanin, August 3, 1943-December 22,1946. Fourteen handwritten notebooks of Cavit
Bey are in the Turkish History Society archives.
3. L. E. Thayer, «The Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire and the Question of their
abrogation as it affects the United States», A, J. I. L XVQ, April 1923, 207-233; N.
Sousa, op. cit., p. 193.
this protest indeed took place with the full cooperation of all Western ambas
sadors in Istanbul on September 10, 19141.
However, shortly thereafter the German and Austro-Hungarian ambas
sadors withdrew their protest12. In the midst of World War they did not wish
to lose their Turkish ally over such trivial matters as capitulations.
The Ottoman Empire entered her last war on the side of the Central
powers. Was she ready to enter this disastrous war? The opinion of all
authorities is negative. There were only 92,000 golden Ottoman liras in the
treasury3. Although the armies and the leadership were much improved
from the conditions that existed before 1913, the troops lacked any kind of
modern equipment and weaponry.
Germany undertook to supply these as Turkey mobilized approximately
2,850,000 troops during the Great War. When the Armistice of Mudros was
signed in October 30, 1918, there were still 580,000 men under arms4. 5Why
did the Ottomans enter the war then? We believe it would be better to ask if
the Ottomans had any choice.
It is our contention that they did not. There were already secret nego
tiations between the Entente Powers (Russia included) calling for the partition
of Turkey6. The fact that despite the refusal of their own armies to fight a
new war after the 1914-1918 debacle, the Entente Governments used such
sub-imperialist nations as Greece and dispossessed Armenians is evidence
in support of this assertion. Moreover, the Turks had finally understood
that liberation from economic bondage to the West could not be solved at
conference tables, but would be fought for on the battlefield.
The position of the Turkish Government can best be illustrated by the
following passage that reflects the tone of the special report presented by the
Committee of Union and Progress to the General Congress of the Party in
September 1916:
«Thinking that the moment had come to deliver ourselves from

the international guardianship inflicted upon our great country
like a pitiless scouge, we entered the general war in October, 1914,
1. L. E. Thayer, ibid., p. 214; Sousa, ibid., p. 193, fn. 6.

2. Hikmet Bayur, op. cit., Ш, p. 186 ff.
3. Commandant M. Larcher, La guerre turque dans la guerre mondiale. Paris,
Berger-Levrault, 1926, p. 602; Avcioğlu, loc. cit,, Ш, p. 929; Aydemir, op. cit., Ш, p. 104.
4. These secret negotiations were confirmed in a series of treaties already mentioned
in footnote 1, page 66.
5. World Peace Foundation Pamphlets, 1924, VII, No. 10, 570; N. Sousa, op. cit.,
p. 188.
70 Doğu Ergit
through an аШапсе with Germany and Austro-Hungary which is

destined to safeguard the national prestige and honour»1.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR: THE END OF AN ILLUSION
The Turks entered the War on several fronts at once. The war equip
ment was supplied by the Germans, the manpower on the «eastern front» by
the Turks. In the first two years of the War there was mutual accord and
significant victories. But it did not take long for the Turks to understand
that the War plans were tailored to fit the needs of Germany’s war effort.
Between the utopian schemes of the Young Turks to march to Turan, and
kindle revolutions in every oppressed Islamic country (often these two schemes
were intermingled which made it more confusing), and to satisfy the German
needs by dispatching armies to God-forsaken places, the Ottoman armies
began to melt away. Enver Paşa sent divisions (120,000) to Poland and Rou-
mania in support of the German operations on the western front1 2. At the
same time Turkish armies fought in Russia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Palestine.
The battles of Dardanelles alone took a toll of a quarter-million Turkish men.
The utopian crusade to open the way to central Asia was broken on the
icy outskirts of the Caucasus with a loss of 78,000 men. This operation was
supported by the Germans because it pinned down a part of the Russian army
in the East, and thus helped to relieve the Western front3.
The Germans wanted a «Canal (Suez) Operation» to halt the transpor
tation of more men from the British colonies to the Western front. The Canal
Operation had another aim. German General Baron Kress von Kressenstein
(then a Lt. Colonel and a participant) writes that the operation was designed
to sever Turco-British relations completely. The Germans were suspicious
that the Turks would sign a separate peace treaty with the British and with
draw from the War4.
1. Liman von Sanders, op. cit, Turkish ed., p. 148;Bayur, op. cit., Ш, pp. 298-303;
Avcioğlu, op. cit., pp. 940-945.
2. Larcher, op. cit., pp. 114, 409 ff.; Avcioğlu, ibid., pp. 946-949.
3. Lieutenant General Baron Kress von Kressenstein, Türklerle Beraber Süveyş
Kanalına (To the Suez Canal With the Turks), tr. from German original by Cap. Mazhar
B. özalpsan, Ankara, General Staff Pub., 1943, passim.
4. One of the most remarkable organizations of the Young Turk regime was the
Teşkilat-i Mahsusa or the Special Organization. Celal Bayar, a young Unionist and
later Prime Minister and third President of the Republic gives an insider’s description of
the Special Organization (SO). According to Bayar, the SO was the crystallization of a re
volutionary cadre that was created to cultivate revolution in the Islamic world. However,
Another Turkish army captured Baghdad. The forces of Ah Ihsan Paşa

entered Iran and fought battles with the British and Russian forces in the
area. In cooperation with local nationalist organizations, guerilla groups
from the «Special Organization» also operated in many countries of Asia
and Africa1.
In the final analysis, the Turkish participation in the Great War was a
the SO was also utilized for many domestic purposes such as the intimidation of the minor,
ities and the opponents of the Union and Progress. The Organization was composed of the
most dynamic officers of the army, and the intellectuals of the Islamic countries. It was a
center of political action and intellectual intercourse. But more than anything, it was a
planning bureau of anti-colonial struggle.
The head of the SO was Süleyman Askeri Bey, one of the star officers of the Union
and Progress. S. Askeri Bey was the master-brain behind the scheme of recapturing West
ern Thrace through guerilla warfare and instituting an independent Turkish State after
the Balkan defeat. The majority of the SO members were well trained guerilla fighters, and
leaders, as well as ardent nationalists. However, their nationalism was built on the suprem
acy of Turkey over the nations and nationalities of the Middle East. It is this factor that has
led Unionist nationalism often to border on imperialism rather than accept the co-exis
tence of nations under one banner as equals.
The Organization grew and became more experienced through domestic and inter
national activities. WWI gave the SO a chance to expand its membership to the revolution
ary nationalist leaders of other Muslim countries. At the beginning of the War the division
of labor and zones of struggle were arranged among the SO officers and Muslim revolu
tionaries as follows: 1) Eşref Kusçubaşi, Inspector General and the leader of revolutionary
operations in Iraq and Iran. 2) Sami Bey, in charge of revolutionary activities in Turkestan
and other parts of northeast Asia inhabited by Turkish and Muslim populations. 3) Activ
ities in Egypt were left to Egyptian revolutionaries like Abdul Aziz Caviş, Dr. Ahmad Fuad,
Ibrahim Ratip, Yusuf, Mustafa Sait and Ferit Beys. 4) Tunis operations were led by Sheikh
Salih-es-Şerif, Ali Başhampa, Cemagi, and Sheikh Cafer Hasan. 5) India, the most strate
gic country for the Young Turks in terms of toppling British imperialism and opening the
way to Turan, was represented in the SO by Indian Muslims like Muhammad Ali, Şevket Ali,
Sheikh Mevlana, Mahmoud Hüseyin, Müderris Hüseyin, Dr. Naşir, and Dr. Hadiyal.
6) Algeria was represented by the sons of Sheikh Abdul Kader, and other nationalists. 7)
African Sahara and Libya were represented by the powerful Sanusis.
The grandiose scheme of initiating nationalist revolutions throughout the Islamic
world against British and French imperialism did not evolve the way the Unionists had
dreamed. But SO inspired revolts in Libya (led by the Sanusis), Sudan fled by Ali Dinar,
Sultan of Darfur), British Somalia (led by Mollah Muhammad) became a threat to the
Western powers as long as these operations could be sustained with little funds, supplies,
and men. Other SO guerilla forces fought in Iran, Iraq, and went as far as Afghanistan.
The data presented above is obtained from four sources: 1) Celal Bayar, Ben de Yazim,
op.cit.,l\, p.1569 ff.; 2) Ş. S. Aydemir, Enver Paşa, op. cit., Ш, pp. 192, 538-539;
3) Avcioğlu, Milli Kurtuluş Tarihi, I, pp. 59-95, and Rauf Orbay’in Hatıraları, Yakin
Tarihimiz, I, p. 18 ff., quoted in Avcioğlu.
1. Aydemir, ibid., p. 36.
72 Doğu Ergil
desperate effort of a bureaucratic nationalist cadre that hoped to save their

country from partition and bondage. But their hopes were linked with new
imperialistic dreams of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism, and doomed to
failure.
The endless and costly battles, the poor supply systems, and frequent
epidemics rapidly depleted the economic and human resources of Anatolia·
By the beginning of 1917, the Government began to draft even 17 year old
children. In the absence of men, women started tending the fields and gar
dens. Hunger, even in rich agricultural sections of the country like Sivas,
induced women to rise in rebellion1.
Finally in 1918, Mustafa Kemal Paşa, a respected Turkish General,
raised his voice to protest the way the war was being conducted. He was
ignored. Taking the responsibility on himself, he collected the survivors
of the Ottoman armies in Aleppo and withdrew this force behind a safe line
in the north (a line which later became part of the present Turkish border)
and organized a line of defense. The enemy did not pass this line.
The Armistice of Mudros ended the hostilities with the Ottoman State,
now reduced to the size of Anatolia, on October 30, 1918. The Union and
Progress abolished itself in the last Party congress on the 19th of October
and the leaders left the country «to return at a time when they can be judged
objectively and in dignity)).
The state of the country when the Armistice was signed was indeed pitiful.
Anatolian mountains were full of armed deserters (300,000) who often preyed
on villages12. Villages and fields were left desolate, unattended. Not only were
all of the men drafted, but most of whatever was raised by the women and
the disabled had been seized. While the poorest strata were dying in the
battlefields and paying the financial bill of the war, the rich were given exemp.
tions from military service for 30 golden liras by the government, which was
suffering under grave financial crises.
The almost universal misery of the countryside, the obviously discrimi
natory policies, and increasing corruption in government services toward the
end of the war, further widened the already existing hiatus between the people
and their government.
It was these poverty-ridden, tired, reluctant, suspicious and authority-
hating people that the nationalists organizing under Mustafa Kemal Paşa
would attempt to mobilize in the desperate struggle for national liberation.
1. Larcher, op. cit., p. 602; Avcioğlu, loc. cit., p. 929.

2. H. Bayur, op. cit., Ш, p. 241; Avcioğlu, ibid., p. 926.

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DOĞU ERGIL

A REASSESSMENT: THE YOUNG TURKS, THEIR POLITICS AND

The Jeunes Turcs or Young Turks were a heterogeneous body of in­

THE «REFORMIST» PERIOD

On February 13, 1909, the Committee accomplished the replacement of

1. T. Z. Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasi Partiler, 1859-1952, Istanbul 1952, p. 186 ff.;

1. E. Pears, ibid., p. 257 ff.; W. M. Ramsay, The Revolution in Constantinople and

What kind of persons were the members of the Committee or Society of

«The Society became the expression of the changing part of the

In essence the Young Turk movement as represented by the Union and

1. N. Berkes, loc. cit., p. 329.

In inevitable consequence of this implicit understanding was the continued

YOUNG TURK POLITICS IN THE «REFORMIST» PERIOD: 1908-1913

But as we shall see Ottomanism, the quasi-federation of the Ottoman nationa­

«We have made unsuccessful attempts to convert the non-Muslim

1. Quoted in B. Lewis, op. cit., p. 218.

in their Ministry of the Interior1.

1. F. Ahmad, op. cit., p. 140.

YOUNG TURK IDEOLOGY IN THE LIBERAL REFORMIST PERIOD

status and a set of privileges and obligations was religion1.

THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD: 1913-1918

1.T. Z. Tunaya, op. cit., p. 222; B. Lewis, op. cit., p. 37.

lost to the small Balkan states. Soon hundreds of thousands of bewildered

FROM OTTOMANISM AND PAN-ISLAMISM TOWARD TURKISH NATIONALISM

As has been discussed earlier, Ottomanism and Pan-Islamism were

TURKISM: AN IDEOLOGICAL CONFUSION

1. F. Ahmad, op. cit., p. 154.

Turkish nationalism became a possibility. Let us examine the transformation

1. Berkes, ibid., p. 428.

organization of the Committee of Union and Progress. It became govern­

«The collapse, too, of Pan-Islamism through Arab uprising

This movement also gave birth to «... a romantic literature devoid of

POLITICS OF THE YOUNG TURKS IN THE BOURGEOIS

Young Turks saw themselves as the representatives of the whole nation,

FROM LIBERALISM TO STATISM:

The Young Turks’ economic program underwent a dramatic change

1. Mehmed Cavit, «Neşriyat ve Vekayi-i iktisadiye», Ulum-u içtimaiye ve iktisadiye

«... in my opinion, we must accept foreigners in such enter­

But Cavit Bey’s own solicitations in England and France as a Minister

1. Prince Sabahaddin, op. cit.

1. F. Ahmad, pp. 140-141.

The founders of the Party advocated the nationalization of all means of

(dt has been recognized that workers of Salonika are organ­

1. Adan Sayilgan, Türkiye’de Sol Hareketler (1871-1972), Istanbul 1972, p. 71;

(but also) the necessity of annulment of established syndicates

1. Max Beer, Fifty Years of International Socialism, London 1935, p. 195; G. H.

1. Haluk Cillov, «Les Recensements industriels en Turquie», Istanbul Universitesi

abolition of capitulation in 1914.The second article of the 1913 Party Program

BREAKING THE POWER OF THE FOREIGN AND

The Armenian Case. The British, French and Russian pressures on

1. Richard G. Hovannisian, Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918, Los Angeles

However, the Turco-Armenian strife continued after 1915, passing

case. Great Britain backed «Greece against Turkey because an aggrandised

Following these events the boycott against Anatolian Greeks took on

1. F. Ahmad, op. cit., p. 24.

the period 1914 to 1916.

1. D. Avcioğlu, loc. cit., pp. 1117-1118.

ABOLITION OF CAPITULATIONS AND

1. Nasim Sousa, The Capitulatory Regime of Turkey, Baltimore, John Hopkins U.

The Unionist Government increasingly felt unprepared as Turkey was

1. On November 22, 1917 Trotsky declared the Soviet Government’s intention of

«We were pursuing a policy of allying ourself with a powerful

For the security and development of the country all three of us

The Jeunes Turcs or Young Turks were a heterogeneous body of in

But as we shall see Ottomanism, the quasi-federation of the Ottoman nationa

organization of the Committee of Union and Progress. It became govern

«... in my opinion, we must accept foreigners in such enter

(dt has been recognized that workers of Salonika are organ

The proposal of a powerful country for a treaty with the Otto